CAUSE: John Kobal died of pneumonia caused by AIDS, aged 51, in London.
Sir Alexander Korda
(SáNDOR LASZLO KELLNER)
Born September 16, 1893
Died January 23, 1956
Cinematic knight. Born in Pusztatúrpásztó, Hungary, the son of a land agent, Korda worked as a proofreader and then journalist before publishing a novel using the name Alexander Korda. In 1911 he travelled to Paris but, unable to find work, returned to Budapest. He landed a job translating French films into Hungarian for subtitling. In 1912 he founded a film magazine and the following year began to write and direct short comedy films with a group of friends. When war broke out in 1914 Korda was excused duties because of poor eyesight and continued to work as a film producer and director. He travelled to Transylvania to create movies with a theatre company there but the war forced his return to Budapest once more. Home again he built a studio called the Corvin. Their first film was a huge success. However, storm clouds were gathering over Hungary after the war and Korda, along with many others, was arrested. On his release he went home, bathed, changed his clothes and left Hungary forever. He migrated to Vienna where he was employed at Sascha Studios. He made, among others, Prinz Und Bettelknabe (1920), Die Tragödie Eines Verschollenen Fürstensohnes (1922) and Samson Und Delila (1922). In 1923 he moved again arriving in Berlin (where he made Das Unbekannte Morgen [1923], Jedermanns Frau [1924], Tragödie Im Hause Habsburg [1924], Der Tänzer Meiner Frau [1925], Madame Wünscht Keine Kinder [1926] and Eine Dubarry Von Heute [1927]) and then three years later arriving in Hollywood. He cast his wife, Maria Corda, in the leading role of his production of The Private Life Of Helen Of Troy (1927). He also made The Stolen Bride (1927), Yellow Lily (1928), Night Watch (1928), Love And The Devil (1929), Her Private Life (1929), The Squall (1929), Lilies Of The Field (1930) and Princess And The Plumber (1930). In 1930 he moved to Europe and joined the Paramount Film Company, making Marius (1931). In 1931 he settled in London after making Service For Ladies (1932). In February 1932 he founded his own company, London Film Productions, utilising a picture of Big Ben as the company trademark. His studios at Denham, finished in 1937, were the most sophisticated in Europe. An economic downturn forced the closure of the studios in 1939 but the bespectacled Korda continued to make films. He once quipped, only half in jest, “The art of film-making is to come to the brink of bankruptcy and stare it in the face.” During World War II Korda worked for British intelligence gathering information. Alexander Korda was pale, overweight, loathed any form of exercise, suffered chronic insomnia, chain-smoked smelly cigars and drank to excess. He was also probably the most successful British (he became a subject in 1936) film director and producer. He was responsible for The Private Life Of Henry VIII (1933), The Girl From Maxim’s (1933), Catherine The Great (1934), The Private Life Of Don Juan (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Sanders Of The River (1935), The Ghost Goes West (1935), Things To Come (1936), Rembrandt (1936), I, Claudius (1937), Elephant Boy (1937), Return Of The Scarlet Pimpernel (1938), The Drum (1938), The Divorce Of Lady X (1938), The Four Feathers (1939), 21 Days (1940), The Thief Of Bagdad (1940), That Hamilton Woman (1941), To Be Or Not To Be (1942), Jungle Book (1942), Perfect Strangers (1945), An Ideal Husband (1947), Anna Karenina (1948) and The Third Man (1949). He was married three times. His first wife was actress Maria Farkas (she subsequently went under the name Maria Corda) whom he married in 1921 and divorced ten years later. In Antibes on June 3, 1939, he married actress Merle Oberon. They divorced in Juarez, Mexico, on June 4, 1945. His final marriage (1953) was to Alexandra Irene Boycun (d. 1966).
CAUSE: In 1945 he suffered a heart attack while dining at Romanoff’s restaurant in Los Angeles with Merle Oberon, Gracie Fields and Monty Banks. His life was saved by a doctor who also happened to be dining. He died at 20 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, aged 62, of a heart attack and was cremated at Golders Green. He left £385,684 11s 9d.
Stanley Kubrick
Born July 26, 1928
Died March 7, 1999
Reclusive loon. Born in The Bronx, New York, Kubrick began his career as an apprentice photographer with Look magazine. In the Fifties he made some short films for RKO and was spotted by producer James B. Harris. Their reputation was made with The Killing (1956) and enhanced by the anti-war film Paths Of Glory (1957). Kubrick went on to make some remarkable films, such as Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971) (which was banned by Kubrick in Britain because of fears of imitative violence and after he received death threats), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980) and Full Metal Jacket (1987). Kubrick developed a reputation as an eccentric when it came to both his films and his life. He lived in Harpenden, Hertfordshire as a recluse and demanded total secrecy for his films. He was pedantic to the point of irritation and had an intercom installed in his house so that he wouldn’t have to speak to visitors directly. Kubrick’s last months were spent in an ultimately futile legal battle with the brilliant investigative magazine Punch after it ran a light-hearted gossip piece about the director’s well-known eccentricities. His last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) which co-starred real life husband and wife Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, was neither a critical nor a commercial success. George C. Scott said Kubrick was “very meticulous and hates everything that he writes or has anything to do with. He’s an incredibly, depressingly serious man … paranoid … He’s a perfectionist and he’s always unhappy with anything that’s set.”
CAUSE: He died of a heart attack in Harpenden aged 70.
Akira Kurosawa
Born March 23, 1910
Died September 6, 1998
Japanese auteur. Born in Omori, Tokyo, the youngest of a soldier’s eight children, Kurosawa, who stood over (6)߰tall, originally wanted to become a painter but found he could not eke out an existence doing that and so applied for a job as an assistant director at a film studio in 1936. His first solo directorial effort was Sugata Sanshiro (1943) but he always referred to Drunken Angel (1948) as his first ‘real’ film. In 1950 he made Rashomon, which was remade as The Outrage (1964). Probably his best-known film is The Seven Samurai (1954), which was reworked as the Western The Magnificent Seven (1960).The Idiot (1951), based on Dostoevsky’s novel, was also well received, as was The Lower Depths (1957), based on the work of the same name by Gorky. He was meticulous when it came to detail, with the result that his films became too expensive to finance from the mid-Sixties. When Dodeska-Den (1971) flopped, he attempted suicide by cutting his wrists with a razor. Four years later, Dersu Uzala (1975) won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. He made only six films in the last 25 years of his life including his only Oscar nomination, Ran (1985), which means ‘wretchedness’ in Japanese and was his version of King Lear. He was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1990.
CAUSE: Kurosawa died of a stroke in Setagaya, Tokyo, aged 88.
L
Barbara La Marr
(REATHA WATSON)
Born July 28, 1896
Died January 30, 1926
‘The girl who was too beautiful’. Born in Yakima, Washington State, 5́ 4˝ Barbara La Marr has achieved a measure of fame for being one of Hollywood’s earliest drug-related deaths. She was raised in California’s Imperial Valley and was soon well known around Los Angeles. She was arrested aged 14; in court, the judge decreed she was “too beautiful to be alone in a big city”. The incident prompted her to make a break with her past; to mark her decision, she took the stage name Barbara La Marr. After several failed marriages she worked as a dancer in burlesque and then married vaudeville actor Ben Deely. A move to New York saw her change tack and become a writer. Using the exotic nom de plume Folly Lytell she wrote six scenarios for Fox. She first came to notice as an actress in Douglas Fairbanks’ The Nut (1921) as Claudine Dupree. La Marr lived like a movie star, and that meant extravagantly. She was paid $250,000 a film and kept her supply of cocaine on a silver salver
on her grand piano. She married five times and when her fifth husband couldn’t afford a wedding ring, MGM’s Paul Bern, who had a crush on her, paid for it. He also supplied the illegal booze for their honeymoon. He was also in love with her and when one night she stood him up at a party he was discovered with his head down a flushing toilet trying to drown himself. All he succeeded in doing was getting the seat jammed on his head. She married for the first time when she was 17. Her husband was Jack Lytell (1914) but he died from pneumonia not long after the wedding. On June 2, 1914, she wed lawyer Lawrence Converse. Since he already had a wife and three children, he was arrested on June 3 and jailed. He banged his head against the cell bars while calling for La Marr, knocking himself unconscious in the process. He died on June 5, following a blood clot on the brain. From October 13, 1916 until 1917 she was married to dancer Phil Ainsworth who was sent to San Quentin for passing rubber cheques. In 1918 she married Ben Deely but separated from him in April 1921. Before her divorce came through she married Western actor Jack Dougherty in May 1923. By 1924 she had become addicted to drink and drugs. She was also very free with her sexual favours. She had an affair with John Gilbert but that ended about the same time that her career went into decline. Barbara was dropped by Louis B. Mayer and moved to First National for her last three films. She then moved back east. She rarely slept more than two hours a day because she believed life was for living. Her films included Harriet And The Piper (1920), Flame Of Youth (1920), Desperate Trails (1921) as Lady Lou, The Three Musketeers as Milady de Winter, Trifling Women (1922) as Jacqueline de Séverac/Zareda, The Prisoner Of Zenda as Antoinette de Mauban, Quincy Adams Sawyer (1922) as Lindy Putnam, Saint Elmo (1923) as Agnes Hunt, Souls For Sale (1923) as Leva Lemaire, during which she was given morphine for a sprained ankle, Strangers Of The Night (1923) as Anna Valeska, The Eternal Struggle (1923) as Camille Lenoir, The Eternal City (1923) as Donna Roma, Sandra (1924) as Sandra Waring, Thy Name Is Woman (1924) as Guerita, The Shooting Of Dan McGrew (1924), The White Moth (1924) as the White Moth, The Heart Of A Siren (1925) as Isabella Echevaria, The White Monkey (1925) as Fleur Forsyte and The Girl From Montmartre (1926) as Emilia. On February 16, 1923, she adopted a son, Marvin Carville La Marr. On her death her son was adopted by actress ZaSu Pitts and his name was changed.
CAUSE: She died at her parents’ home in Altadena, California. Officially her death was due to anorexia but she also suffered from tuberculosis and nephritis and her consumption of booze and drugs further hastened her end. She was just 29 years old. She was buried in the Cathedral Mausoleum of Hollywood Memorial Park, 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, California 90038.
Alfred ‘Lash’ La Rue
Born June 15, 1917
Died May 21, 1996
Bullwhip Kid. Lash La Rue, one of those cinematic cowboys popular in the Forties, grew up in Gretna, Louisiana, and following his father’s early death, mother and son relocated to California. After dropping out of education, he became a barber. He was screen-tested but turned down because, he believed, he resembled Humphrey Bogart. A couple of bit parts lead to his first cowboy picture, Song Of Old Wyoming (1945), as the Cheyenne Kid and he went on to appear in innumerable films, made cheaply (average budget $20,000) and quickly. In that first film he brandished a 20-foot bullwhip and it became his trademark. He followed that up with Law Of The Lash (1947) as Cheyenne, Ghost Town Renegades (1947) as Cheyenne Davis, Return Of The Lash (1947) as Cheyenne Davis, Cheyenne Takes Over (1947) as Cheyenne Davis, The Enchanted Valley (1948) as Pretty Boy, Son Of Billy The Kid (1949) as Jack Garrett, Mark Of The Lash (1949) as himself, Outlaw County (1950), King Of The Bullwhip (1951) as himself and the last ‘Lash’ film, Vanishing Outpost (1951). Spurned by cinema thereafter, La Rue turned to the small screen for Lash Of The West (1952–1953). When that ended, he was caught stealing candy from a baby in Florida, was accused of vagrancy, drunk and disorderly behaviour and possession of marijuana. In his spare time he wrote scripts for porn films. He subsequently found the Lord and became an evangelist. In 1984 a magazine ad for work brought him parts on two films but they were not successful. He was married and divorced ten times, making him (probably) Hollywood’s most married star.
CAUSE: He died in Burbank, California, aged 78, from emphysema.
Alan Ladd
Born September 3, 1913
Died January 29, 1964
Frightened and insecure tough guy. Born an only child in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Alan Walbridge Ladd was, in 1932, an American diving champion and also held the 50-yards freestyle record. That same year he became an actor at Universal but was dropped after four months. He then became a grip at Warner Bros earning $4.50 a week. In October 1936 he married Marjorie Jane ‘Midge’ Harrold (b. October 25, 1915, d. May 1, 1957) and their son, Alan, Jr, was born on October 5, 1937. In 1938 former actress Sue Carol (b. Chicago, Illinois, October 30, 1906, as Evelyn Jean Lederer, d. February 4, 1982, after a stroke) became his agent and promoted him with a fierce enthusiasm. On March 13, 1942, following his July 1941 divorce, Sue Carol became his second wife and he her fourth and final husband. Their son, David, was born on February 5, 1947, and went on to marry (in May 1974) Charlie’s Angel Cheryl Ladd (née Stopplemoor). His third wife was Dey Young whose sister, actress Leigh Taylor Young, was the second wife of Ryan O’Neal whose long-term live-in girlfriend was Farrah Fawcett whom Cheryl Ladd replaced on Charlie’s Angels. Their daughter, Alana, was born on April 21, 1943, and Ladd adopted Sue Carol’s daughter, Carol Lee who was born on July 18, 1932. Alan Ladd’s early films included Tom Brown Of Culver (1932), Island Of Lost Souls (1933), Pigskin Parade (1936), Souls At Sea (1937), Hold ’Em Navy (1937) as Chief Quartermaster, Born To The West (1937), Come On, Leathernecks! (1938), The Green Hornet (1939) as Gilpin, Rulers Of The Sea (1939) as Colin Farrell, Captain Caution (1940) as Newton, Brother Rat And A Baby (1940), Those Were The Days (1940) as Keg Rearick, Her First Romance (1940), Petticoat Politics (1941), The Black Cat (1941) as Richard Hartley, Citizen Kane (1941) and many more. It was only when the more established actors began to be called up for military duties that Ladd began to establish himself as a lead player. His first major successes came in This Gun For Hire (1942) as the vengeful killer Philip Raven and The Glass Key (1942) as loner Ed Beaumont. He teamed up with Veronica Lake in these and three other films, a partnership that found favour with the public. Ladd developed a niche as a movie tough guy despite only being 5˝5˝. His career dwindled in the Fifties until he took the title role in Shane (1953). Ladd, a morose individual, suffered from insecurity and had a tremendous inferiority complex about his acting. With Shane it all came together although even then, Ladd regarded the film as a fluke and was bitterly disappointed not even to be nominated for an Oscar. His career continued to downturn and he attempted suicide in 1963 by shooting himself in the chest. His other films included Salty O’Rourke (1945) as Salty O’Rourke, The Blue Dahlia (1946) as Johnny Morrison, Two Years Before The Mast (1946) as Charles Stewart, My Favorite Brunette (1947) as Sam McCloud, Calcutta (1947) as Neale Gordon, Whispering Smith (1948) as Luke ‘Whispering’ Smith, Saigon (1948) as Major Larry Briggs, The Great Gatsby (1949) as Jay Gatsby, Eyes Of Hollywood (1949), Branded (1950) as Choya, Appointment With Danger (1951) as Al Goddard, The Iron Mistress (1952) as Jim Bowie, The Red Beret (1953) as Canada, Thunder In The East (1953) as Steve Gibbs, Desert Legion (1953) as Paul Lartal, The Black Knight (1954) as John, Hell Below Zero (1954) as Duncan Craig, Saskatchewan (1954) as O’Rourke, Santiago (1956) as Cash Adams, Boy On A Dolphin (1957) as Dr James Calder, The Proud Rebel (1958) as John Chandler, The Man In The Net (1959) as John Hamilton, Guns Of The Timberland (1960) as Jim Hadley, All The Young Men (1960) as Kincaid, 13 West Street (1962) as Walt Sherill and The Carpetbaggers (1964) as Nevada Smith.
CAUSE: Ladd committed suicide with a drink and drugs overdose in Palm Springs, California, aged 50. His mother, Ina Raleigh Ladd Beavers (b. West Chester, Pennsylvania, November 25, 1888), had died by her own hand on November 29, 1937, by drinking ant po
ison.
FURTHER READING: Ladd: A Hollywood Tragedy – Beverly Linet (New York: Berkley, 1980).
Carl Laemmle
Born January 17, 1867
Died September 24, 1939
Pioneer. Carl Laemmle was born, the 10th of 13 children (eight died during his childhood) of Julius Baruch Laemmle and Rebekka Laemmle, in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany. At the age of 13 Laemmle became an apprentice stationer and in 1884, following the death of his mother, he emigrated to America to try his luck, landing in Chicago where his older brother, Joseph, was living. In 1889 he became an American citizen. In 1894 he moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin where he became an accountant for a clothing firm. In 1906 he opened his first cinema and named it the White Front. He quickly bought other premises and set up Laemmle Film Service to buy and distribute films. He later went into production and in 1909 made 11 short films in New York. In 1910 his company, Imperial Motion Pictures Company of America (IMP) signed Mary Pickford from Biograph and paid her $175 a week, $75 more than she was getting. He also created the world’s first film star. Before Pickford, actors had been all but anonymous. In 1912 he co-founded Universal Pictures Corporation, the year after he had bought his first Hollywood studio. In 1915 he began building a studio complex called Universal City. As well as creating the first film star, Laemmle, who stood less than (5)߰tall, also became notorious for nepotism. Laemmle promoted Lon Chaney in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1923) and also sponsored Erich von Stroheim’s directing career. He also mentored Irving Thalberg. In 1930 Laemmle’s studio made the anti-war epic All Quiet On The Western Front starring Lew Ayres. After the First World War, Laemmle had been in the vanguard of supporters for rebuilding Germany. In 1936, he sold Universal to a syndicate for a reported $5,500,000. He married Recha Stern on August 28, 1898 by whom he had a son, Julius (later Carl Jr) and a daughter, Rosabelle.
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