CAUSE: In the spring of 1967 she was sacked from her British tour because of “disfiguring black and blue marks from her knees up”. A lack of organisation and Jayne’s increasing dependency on alcohol didn’t help. On June 28, 1967, Jayne appeared at the Gus Stevens Supper Club in Biloxi, Mississippi. With Sam Brody and her three children, 19-year-old Ronnie Harrison at the wheel of the year-old Buick, Jayne set off for New Orleans, Louisiana, and her next appointment with WESU-TV’s The Midday Show. At approximately 2.25am the next morning the car was travelling along Route 90. With just 15 miles to go to reach their destination Harrison was temporarily blinded by the reflection of his own headlights in the mist caused by a mosquito-spraying machine at the kerb. When his vision returned it was too late for him to prevent driving at speed into the back of a lorry. He and Brody were flung out of the wreckage, dying instantly. Jayne died of a “crushed skull with avulsion of cranium and brain. Closed fracture of right humerus. Multiple lacerations of hands and lower extremities.” Most reports have Jayne being decapitated although Louisiana undertaker Jim Roberts denies this. It was, he says, her blonde wig that was thrown from the wreckage and seen by those at the death site that created the myth. She was 34 years old. She was buried in Fairview Cemetery, Plainfield (Outside of Pen Argyl), Pennsylvania.
FURTHER READING: Jayne Mansfield: A Biography– May Mann (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1974); Jayne Mansfield And The American Fifties– Martha Saxton (New York: Bantam, 1976); Pink Goddess: The Jayne Mansfield Story– Michael Feeney Callan (London: W.H. Allen, 1986); Here They Are: Jayne Mansfield– Raymond Strait (New York: SPI, 1992).
Fredric March
(ERNEST FREDERICK MCINTYRE BICKEL)
Born August 31, 1897
Died April 14, 1975
Journeyman with occasional flashes of brilliance. Born in Racine, Wisconsin, 5́ 10˝ March was intended for the world of finance by his family but he had other ideas. He studied economics at the University of Wisconsin and after fighting in World War I he migrated to New York in 1920 and began a career as an actor appearing as a bit part player in various films. He signed to Paramount and began receiving plaudits for his acting although Shelley Winters remembered, “He was able to do a very emotional scene with tears in his eyes and pinch my fanny at the same time.” March’s stage name came from a diminution of his mother’s maiden name, Marcher. His films included Paris Bound (1929) as Jim Hutton, Jealousy (1929) as Pierre, Footlights And Fools (1929) as Gregory Pyne, The Royal Family Of Broadway (1930) as Tony Cavendish, Ladies Love Brutes (1930) as Dwight Howell, Manslaughter (1930) as Dan O’Bannon, Laughter (1930) as Paul Lockridge, My Sin (1931) as Dick Grady, Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1931) as Dr Henry Jekyll/Mr Hyde, for which he won an Oscar, Merrily We Go to Hell as Jerry Corbett, Tonight Is Ours as Sabien Pastal, Design For Living (1933) as Tom Chambers, The Barretts Of Wimpole Street (1934) as Robert Browning, All Of Me (1934) as Don Ellis, The Dark Angel (1935) as Alan Trent, Anna Karenina (1935) as Count Alexei Vronsky, Anthony Adverse (1936) as Anthony Adverse, Mary Of Scotland (1936) as Earl of Bothwell, A Star Is Born (1937) as Norman Maine, Nothing Sacred (1937) as Wally Cook, Trade Winds (1938) as Sam Wye, There Goes My Heart (1938) as Bill Spencer, Victory (1940) as Hendrik Heyst, I Married A Witch (1942) as Wallace Wooley, The Adventures Of Mark Twain (1944) as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946) as Al Stephenson, for which he won a second Oscar, Christopher Columbus (1949) as Christopher Columbus, Death Of A Salesman (1951) as Willy Loman, The Bridges At Toko-Ri (1954) as Rear Admiral George Tarrant, Executive Suite (1954) as Loren Phineas Shaw, Inherit The Wind (1960) as Matthew Harrison Brady and The Iceman Cometh (1973) as Harry Hope. Married twice, he wed stage actress Ellis Baker in 1923 and Florence Eldridge on May 30, 1927. They adopted two children: Penelope (1932) and Anthony (1935).
CAUSE: Aged 77, he died in Los Angeles, California, of cancer.
Richard Marner
(ALEXANDER MOLCHANOFF-SACHA)
Born March 27, 1921
Died March 18, 2004
Talented character actor. Born in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) in the Soviet Union, he was the eldest son of Colonel Paul Molchanoff, of the Semionovsky regiment, one of the two hereditary Imperial Guards regiments founded by Peter the Great. In 1924 the family fled the Bolsheviks via Finland and Germany, finally ending up in London, where Alexander’s grandmother, ‘Babushka London’, had a home on Harley Street. His great-grandmother – known to the family as ‘Babushka Claridges’ because of the years spent living in the hotel – was the slavophile Madame Olga Novikoff, who was Tsar Nicholas I’s goddaughter. Alexander was educated at Monmouth School, after which he became an assistant to the Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing at Covent Garden. Following a spell in the RAF from which he was invalided out, he decided to become an actor and, changing his name to Richard Marner, he joined a repertory company. Marner appeared in more than two dozen films. His parts ranged from that of an officer in The African Queen (1951) to the Russian President Zorkin in The Sum Of All Fears (2001), with Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman and Alan Bates. Marner also played a Vopo captain in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965), Colonel Lebotov in Oh Rosalinda! (1955), a spacecraft operator in You Only Live Twice (1967), and a Greek Bishop in the 65th episode of Lovejoy (1994). Having not achieved stardom Marner worked as a salesman for a costume jewellers but his money worries were at an end when he was cast as the benignly idiotic Colonel Kurt von Strohm in the long-running BBC sitcom ’Allo ’Allo set in the northern French town of Nouvion. Marner appeared in all 85 episodes of the sitcom. It was not the first time Marner had been chosen to play an army officer – he was an SS colonel in Lili Marlene (1951), a German NCO in The Safecracker (1958), a German colonel in Circle Of Deception (1961), and a Russian air force general in The Mouse On The Moon (1963). He was an aficionado of the turf and kept a separate bank account for betting. In 1947 he married Pauline and they had one daughter.
CAUSE: Richard Marner died in Perth, Scotland, where he had retired with his wife. He was 82.
Betty Marsden
Born February 24, 1919
Died July 19, 1998
The woman of a thousand voices. Betty Marsden worked in all branches of showbiz. She was a regular on TV comedy shows, began making films in 1938 (The Sky Raiders as Miss Quarm) and positively shone on radio. Her other films included Ships With Wings (1941) as Jean, Ramsbottom Rides Again (1956) as Florrie Ramsbottom, Carry On Regardless (1961) as Mata Hari, The Wild Affair (1963) as Mavis Cook, The Leather Boys (1963) as Dot’s Mother, Carry On Camping (1969) as Harriet Potter, Sudden Terror (1970) as Madame Robiac, Britannia Hospital as Hermione, The Dresser as Violet Manning and Little Dorrit (1988) as Mrs Phoebe Barnacle. However, it was on radio that she excelled, especially in the brilliant comedy shows Beyond Our Ken and Round The Horne, where she played such diverse characters as Daphne Whitethigh, Buttercup Gruntfuttock, Dame Celia Molestrangler, Julie Coolibah, Fanny Haddock, Bea Clissold and Lady Counterblast “many, many times”.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 118