Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: He died of Parkinson’s disease at 27 Rumbold Road, Fulham, London SW 7 aged 67. He was worth £186,918 when he died.

  FURTHER READING: More Or Less – Kenneth More (London: Coronet, 1979).

  Morecambe & Wise

  (JOHN ERIC BARTHOLOMEW)

  Born May 14, 1926

  Died May 28, 1984

  (ERNEST WISEMAN)

  Born November 27, 1925

  Died March 21, 1999

  Britain’s best-loved comedy duo. The two men were not close friends despite their long partnership. (Perhaps because one came from Lancashire and the other Yorkshire?) It was a business relationship, as one critic remarked: “What drove Eric Morecambe? Ernie Wise. What drove Ernie Wise? Money.” Eric was an only child but his mother and father had 15 brothers and a sister between them. He wasn’t very conscientious at school, coming 45th out of 49 pupils, and didn’t bother to turn up for exams. Ernie’s career began in a double act with his father known as Carson and Kid, later Bert Carson and the Little Wonder. Eric and Ernie were persuaded by Eric’s mum to be a double act. They were sacked from the Windmill because they weren’t as funny as another double act, Hancock and Scott – Tony Hancock and Derek Scott. Morecambe & Wise’s first BBC show was so awful they urged the corporation to take it off the air. Ernie, like many in showbiz, was very careful with his money in real life and not just on the shows. He bought his house cheaply because it was in the flightpath of Heathrow. Ernie always signed autographs “Ernie Wise, OBE ”. Their film work was limited to The Intelligence Men (1964), That Riviera Touch (1966) and The Magnificent Two (1967).

  CAUSE: Eric died of a heart attack at Cheltenham General Hospital while appearing in a stage show at the Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury alongside his friend Stan Stennett. More than 1,000 people attended his funeral. He left £517,205. In November 1998 Ernie went on a Caribbean cruise but fell ill with two strokes and a heart attack. On January 24, 1999, he was operated on and doctors performed a triple by-pass. He died of heart failure at 7am at Nuffield Hospital, Wrexham Park, Buckinghamshire. He left £503,299 (gross); £341,484 (net).

  FURTHER READING: Eric & Ernie: The Autobiography Of Morecambe & Wise – Dennis Holman (London: W.H. Allen, 1973); Morecambe & Wise – Graham McCann (London: Fourth Estate, 1999).

  Frank Morgan

  (FRANCIS PHILLIP WUPPERMANN)

  Born June 1, 1890

  Died September 18, 1949

  The Wizard of Oz. There are some actors who can appear in around 100 films, yet will always be known for just one role. Frank Morgan was just such an actor. Born in New York, one of 11 children, he followed his actor brother into the business, eventually signing for MGM. He appeared in, among many others, The Daring Of Diana (1916) as John Briscoe, Who’s Your Neighbor? (1917) as Dudley Carlton, At The Mercy Of Men (1918) as Count Nicho, The Golden Shower (1919) as Lester, Manhandled (1924) as Arno Riccardi, Scarlet Saint (1925) as Baron Badeau, Love’s Greatest Mistake (1927) as William Ogden, Dangerous Nan McGrew (1930) as Muldoon, Laughter (1930) as C. Morton Gibson, Reunion In Vienna (1933) as Anton, Hallelujah, I’m A Bum (1933) as Mayor John Hastings, Billion Dollar Scandal (1933) as Masterson, When Ladies Meet (1933) as Rogers Woodruf, Bombshell (1933) as Pop Burns, The Affairs Of Cellini (1934) as the Duke of Florence, for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, Escapade (1935) as Karl, Dimples (1936) as Professor Eustace Appleby, The Great Ziegfeld (1936) as Jack Billings, Saratoga (1937) as Jesse Kiffmeyer, Mother Carey’s Chickens (1938) as Captain Carey, Sweethearts (1938) as Felix Lehman, Balalaika (1939) as Ivan Danchenoff, Broadway Melody Of 1940 (1940) as Bob Casey, Honky Tonk (1941) as Judge Cotton, Tortilla Flat (1942) as the Pirate, for which he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Casanova Brown (1944) as Mr Ferris, Yolanda And The Thief (1945) as Victor Budlow Trout, Courage Of Lassie (1946) as Harry MacBain, The Three Musketeers (1948) as King Louis XIII and Gold Fever (1952) as Nugget Jack. However, it is his role in The Wizard Of Oz (1939) for which he is best known. Bizarrely, Morgan plays five roles in the film: Professor Marvel, the doorman of the Emerald City, a taxi driver, the Guardian of the Emerald City Gates and the Wizard. What is even stranger is that he wasn’t first choice for the part – the producers wanted W.C. Fields.

  CAUSE: Morgan had been cast as Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun when he died in his sleep in Beverly Hills, California. He was 59. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, 5th Avenue & 25th Street, Brooklyn, New York 11232.

  Robert Morley, CBE

  Born May 26, 1908

  Died June 3, 1992

  ‘The First Gentleman’. Born at Broadoak, Semley, Wiltshire, Robert Adolph Wilton Morley was the future son-in-law of actress Gladys Cooper and Herbert Buckmaster, the man who invented the Buck’s Fizz. As a child Morley suffered from chest pains and biliousness, put down to overeating by the family doctor, much to the consternation of his parents who believed he had to be fed to keep his strength up. Originally intended for a career in the diplomatic service, on September 29, 1926, he auditioned for and was accepted at RADA. On May 28, 1928, he made his stage début at the Margate Hippodrome appearing in Dr Syn. His first West End appearance came playing a pirate in Treasure Island on Boxing Day 1929 at the Strand Theatre. Nine years later, he entered films playing King Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette (1938) and soon gained a reputation as a fine character actor who excelled both in pompous and easygoing parts. He appeared in Major Barbara (1941) as Andrew Undershaft, The Young Mr Pitt (1942) as Charles James Fox, I Live In Grosvenor Square (1945) as the Duke of Exmoor, The Ghosts Of Berkeley Square (1947) as General Burlap, The African Queen (1951) as Reverend Samuel Sayer, Melba (1953) as Oscar Hammerstein, The Story Of Gilbert And Sullivan (1953) as W.S. Gilbert, Beau Brummell (1954) as King George III, Beat The Devil (1954) as Petersen, The Adventures Of Quentin Durward (1955) as King Louis XI, Around The World In 80 Days (1956) as Ralph, The Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw as Uncle Lucius, Oscar Wilde as Oscar Wilde, Libel (1959) as Sir Wilfred, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1959) as Sir Ralph Bloomfield-Bonington, The Battle Of The Sexes (1959) as Robert MacPherson, The Young Ones (1961) as Hamilton Black, The Road To Hong Kong (1962) as The Leader, Murder At The Gallop (1963) as Hector Enderby, Of Human Bondage (1964) as Dr Jacobs, Topkapi (1964) as Cedric Page, A Study In Terror (1965) as Mycroft Holmes, Genghis Khan (1965) as the Emperor of China, Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, Or How I Flew From London To Paris In 25 Hours 11 Minutes as Lord Rawnsley, Hotel Paradiso as Henri Cotte, Lola (1969) as Judge Roxborough, Doctor In Trouble (1970) as Captain George Spratt, Who Is Killing The Great Chefs Of Europe? (1978) as Max and Little Dorrit (1988) as Lord Decimus Barnacle. He compiled two collections of unintentional mistakes and was one of the original team captains on Call My Bluff. He married Joan Buckmaster (b. July 5, 1910) on February 23, 1940, at Caxton Hall, London. They had two sons, Sheridan (b. December 5, 1941), and Wilton (b. Fairmans Cottage, Wargrave, Berkshire, August 27, 1951, at 6.30am) and one daughter, Annabel (b. Fairmans Cottage, Wargrave, Berkshire, June 10, 1946). She was born six weeks prematurely and spent the first period of her life living in an airing cupboard. Oddly, both Sheridan Morley and his ex-wife have written biographies of Robert Morley.

  CAUSE: For a devoted race-goer such as Morley, it was perhaps appropriate that he died on Derby Day, three days after suffering a stroke from which he never regained consciousness. He was 84.

  FURTHER READING: Robert Morley: Larger Than Life – Margaret Morley (London: Coronet, 1980); Robert My Father – Sheridan Morley (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993).

  Vic Morrow

  Born St Valentine’s Day 1929

  Died July 23, 1982

  Tragedian. Despite a solid body of television movies to his credit, Vic Morrow is known today for two reasons – his daughter is the beautiful and talented actress Jennifer Jason Leigh and he died under tragic circumstances. Vic Morrow was born in the Bronx, New York, one of three children (there was a brother and a sister) of Harry Morrow, an electrical engineer, and Jean Kress,
in a typical, middle-class, Jewish family. He left school at 17 to join the US Navy. Using the same government grant to help ex-servicemen that Rod Steiger and Jeff Corey used, Morrow went to Florida State University to study law. Many lawyers need to be good actors and while at university Morrow discovered he preferred acting on stage to acting in a court of law. He said his decision to study “had more to do with the drama of a great courtroom performance than any love of the law”. He first studied at Mexico City College (1950) where he “performed in bilingual productions of Shakespeare, Molière and Shaw”. He then moved to New York and joined the Actors’ Workshop on a two-year course under Paul Mann. Morrow was asked not to act professionally until his training was over so in order to make ends meet, he drove a cab for a living. He was then cast as Stanley Kowalski in a summer stock production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. He was signed to MGM and made his film début in Pandro S. Berman’s Blackboard Jungle (1955) as Artie West, “a tough talking, surly, street punk”. He was lauded by the critics but Morrow said, “Sure, the notices were great, but y’da thought they’d picked me up out of an ashcan and made me a star. Hell, I’d already done Shakespeare, Chekhov and all those other cats.” Morrow was regularly cast as the bad guy or the heavy in films and he became disillusioned. His films included: Tribute To A Bad Man (1956) as Lars Peterson, Men In War (1957) as Corporal James Zwickley, Hell’s Five Hours (1958) as Nash, King Creole (1958) as Shark, God’s Little Acre (1958) as Shaw Walden, Cimarron (1960) as Wes Jennings, Portrait Of A Mobster (1961) as Dutch Schultz and Posse From Hell (1961) as Crip. Morrow moved behind the cameras and began directing after studying at the University of Southern California. He also began directing community theatre. Morrow also began appearing on television and was cast as Sergeant Chip Saunders in the ABC military series Combat. The show ran from October 2, 1962 until August 29, 1967 (the day that also saw the very last episode of The Fugitive broadcast) and the cast were sent to boot camp for a week to toughen them up. The programme made him a star but also cost him his first marriage. In 1965 he was divorced after seven years from Barbara Turner, an actress and screenwriter, by whom he had two daughters Carrie Ann (b. 1958) and Jennifer Leigh (b. February 5, 1962), and three years later his series for which he had been paid $5,000 a week was cancelled. The divorce (she had had an affair with Robert Altman), which alienated him from his children, and the end of Combat made Morrow depressed and it would be seven years before he was back in front of the cameras in the instantly forgettable Target: Harry (1969) in which he played Harry Black. For most of the Seventies 5́ 9˝ Morrow appeared in television movies such as A Step Out Of Line (premièred February 26, 1971) as Joe Rawlins, Travis Logan, D.A. (premièred March 11, 1971) as Travis Logan, River Of Mystery (premièred October 1, 1971) as Phil Munger, Truman Capote’s The Glass House (premièred February 4, 1972) as Hugo Slocum, The Weekend Nun (premièred December 20, 1972) as Chuck Jardine, The Police Story (premièred March 20, 1973) as Sergeant Joe LaFrita, Tom Sawyer (premièred March 23, 1973) as Injun Joe, Nightmare (premièred January 8, 1974) as Detective Rausch, The California Kid (premièred September 25, 1974) as Sheriff Roy Childress, Death Stalk (premièred January 21, 1975) as Leo Brunner, The Night That Panicked America (premièred October 31, 1975) as Hank Muldoon, The Ghost Of Cypress Swamp (1976) as Toni Stone, The Man With The Power (premièred May 24, 1977) as Paul, The Hostage Heart (premièred September 9, 1977) as Steve Rockewicz, Curse Of The Black Widow (premièred September 16, 1977) as Lieutenant Gully Conti, Wild And Wooly (premièred February 20, 1978) as Warden Willis and Stone (premièred August 26, 1979) as Morgan Teckington. He also appeared playing Ames in the serial about slavery, Roots, and on the big screen in The Take (1974) as Manso, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) as Everett Franklin, The Bad News Bears (1976) as Coach Roy Turner, Treasure Of Matecumbe (1976) as Spangler, Funeral For An Assassin (1977) as Michael Cardiff and The Evictors (1979) as Jake Rudd. It seemed that he was unable to land strong parts in first-rate films. A second marriage (1975) was doomed to failure and Morrow’s mother died in 1978. His younger daughter changed her name to Jennifer Jason Leigh in an effort to escape being labelled “Vic Morrow’s kid”. Vic saw this as the ultimate act of disloyalty. He began drinking heavily. Then one day in 1982 the call came to appear as Bill Connor in John Landis’ film Twilight Zone: The Movie.

  CAUSE: At 2.30am on July 23, 1982, John Landis was desperately trying to film a scene called Time Out which had Morrow wading knee-deep through the Santa Clara river carrying Renee Chen and My-ca Le, two illegally employed Vietnamese children, one aged 7, the other 6. The children were not professional actors and they weren’t on proper work permits. They should also have been in bed but their parents were thrilled to have their family involved in a real Hollywood film so they raised no objection. Landis was keen to get the scene in the bag. The segment was to take place in the jungles of Vietnam, the real location being Indian Dunes Park, a dirt bike park near Six Flags over Magic Mountain theme park. Also in the shot would be a village under military siege, and a helicopter coming towards them. The shot would be littered with gigantic explosions. It didn’t go well. Even the special effects people were concerned by the scene. Then the helicopter entered and Landis screamed, “Lower! Lower! Lower!” to direct the chopper downwards. It hovered just 24 feet above the water and cameras filmed the entire event. There was even a cameraman standing on the skid of the helicopter, filming as the explosions went off. Just when the pilot of the helicopter was about to fly away, two more blasts came and he lost control. Extras fled but Morrow lost his grip on Renee and as he struggled to get hold of her, the helicopter landed on top of her and crushed her to death. The 40-ft diameter blades decapitated Morrow and My-ca Le. The cameras continued to roll. Landis and his assistant director made their way down to the scene, and his assistant found Morrow’s torso in the water. The people in the helicopter escaped injury. An announcement was made to the cast and crew: “Leave your equipment where it is. Everyone go home. Please, everyone go home!” Jack Rimmer, one of the fire-safety officers, covered Morrow’s torso and placed it on a bank. As he was wading across the river to the village to douse the fires there, Rimmer found My-ca Le’s head in the water. A crew member brought over a plastic rubbish bag and placed the little boy’s severed head inside. Special effects technician Kevin Quibell located Morrow’s head and that was placed in another black plastic bag. On July 25, Landis spoke at Morrow’s funeral: “Tragedy can strike in an instant but film is immortal. Vic lives forever. Just before the last take, Vic took me aside to thank me for the opportunity to play this role.” Vic Morrow was buried in Block 5 of Mount of Olives at Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 West Centinela Avenue, Los Angeles 90045. The inscription on his gravestone written by Carrie reads ‘Victor “Vic” Morrow 1929–1982 I loved him as “Dad” to everyone else he was “Vic” ’. In his will, written in purple felt tip pen on yellow paper, just seven months before his death, Morrow left the bulk of his million-dollar estate (house, bank accounts, safety deposit boxes, personal effects and Macho the dog) to Carrie. Jennifer, who had remained estranged from her father, received the token sum of $100. Earlier in his career Morrow had been called upon to fly in a helicopter in the film Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. He refused saying, “I’m not getting up in the helicopter. I have a premonition that I’m going to get killed in a helicopter crash.” On July 27 both children were buried – Renee is buried in Forest Lawn Glendale and My-ca Le in Cerritos. Indian Dunes is now owned by the Newhall Ranch Development Company of Newhall, California. They closed the area to movie and film production in the early Nineties for what they termed “agricultural use”. Indian Dunes was used for many movies and television programmes, most notably Black Sheep Squadron with Robert Conrad and Some Kind Of Hero with Richard Pryor. Many silent films and westerns were also filmed there. On January 9, 1984, in a preliminary hearing prior to the court case, Landis openly mocked the prosecutor. On April 23 of the same year, Landis and two co-workers were indicted o
n three charges of “the involuntary manslaughter of the actors Vic Morrow, Renee Chen and My-ca Le”. The trial of Landis and four others eventually opened on September 3, 1986, over four years after the event. On May 29, 1987, all five defendants were acquitted. On June 25, 1988, Landis invited all members of the jury to a private screening of his new film Coming To America.