Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: He died aged 70 in Winchester, Hampshire, from the effects of a stroke.

  Paul Robeson

  Born April 9, 1898

  Died January 23, 1976

  The first black hero. A star football player and lawyer, Paul Leroy Robeson was the sixth child of William Drew Robeson (b. Martin County, North Carolina, July 27, 1845, d. May 17, 1918), a Carolina cotton plantation slave who became a Presbyterian minister, and Maria Louisa Bustill (b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 8, 1853) who died on January 19, 1904, when Paul was five. Deciding against a career at the bar, he became a singer and actor. He appeared as Othello in Shakespeare’s play in May 1930 opposite Peggy Ashcroft at the Savoy Theatre, but as a negro he was forbidden entrance to the hotel. It was Ashcroft’s affair with Robeson that began the end of her first marriage. Robeson married Eslanda Cardozo ‘Essie’ Goode (b. 1897, d. New York City, December 13, 1965) in August 1921 but admitted he had no fatherly interest in his son Pauli (b. November 2, 1927) whom he sent to school in the Soviet Union. Eslanda wrote that Robeson was lazy, had no sense of loyalty to his friends and did not realise when he was being racially abused. He made his film début in The Emperor Jones (1933), although he was happier on stage, often performing in the United Kingdom. Later in the decade Robeson appeared in the films Sanders Of The River (1935) and King Solomon’s Mines (1937). A left-winger, he was blacklisted in America for his views but his biggest ‘crime’ in US eyes came in December 1952 when he accepted the Stalin Peace Prize. His passport was revoked and he was unable to leave the States for six years. His final years were spent as a recluse. His signature tune was ‘Ole Man River’, which he performed in the film Show Boat (1936).

  CAUSE: In January 1959 Robeson was treated in a Kremlin hospital suffering from flu and dizzy spells. Another illness in 1961 forced his retirement. He lived with wife Essie in Jumal Terrace, Harlem, until her death when he moved to live with his sister in Philadelphia. He suffered a stroke on December 28, 1975, and was admitted to the city’s Presbyterian University Hospital where he died, aged 77.

  FURTHER READING: Paul Robeson: The Man And His Mission – Ron Ramdin (London: Peter Owen, 1987).

  Sir George Robey

  (GEORGE EDWARD WADE)

  Born September 20, 1869

  Died November 29, 1954

  ‘The Prime Minister of Mirth’. Robey was born at 334 Kennington Road, Herne Hill, London, the son of a civil engineer, which meant that the family moved about regularly. Studying at Leipzig University, Robey fought a duel in which he was wounded. At the end of his father’s posting, the family returned to England where Robey began a clerical job working in Birmingham. A talented amateur singer, he regularly appeared in concerts, simultaneously discovering his comic talents. He began earning small amounts of money but since this caused friction at home he adopted the stage name Roby, later Robey – the name of a builder’s business in Birmingham. He later changed his name by deed poll. He made his music hall début in June 1891 at Oxford. Although billed only as ‘an extra’, his talent shone through and his name was soon added to the publicity posters. Robey not only became a name but also a character. He wore a red nose but blackened his eyebrows and donned a long, black, frock coat and a top hat. (He later abandoned the topper in favour of a squashed bowler.) A masher’s cane and the absence of a collar completed the ensemble. Robey pretended to scold his audience for seeing double meanings in his carefully delivered monologues: “Desist! Really, I meantersay! Let there be merriment by all means, let there be merriment, but let it be tempered by dignity and the reserve which is compatible with the obvious refinement of our environment.” He worked hard, often playing to several houses a night. At the turn of the century he made his first film, The Rats (1900). It would be 13 years before he stepped in front of a camera again, appearing in And Very Nice Too, Good Queen Bess (1913). At Christmas Robey was a favourite pantomime dame. Critics, usually the most cynical of audiences, flocked to his shows. One described his work as “finished like a cut jewel … the art within its limits, is not to be surpassed”. When the popularity of the ‘single turn’ waned Robey became the comedian in large scale revues. During the First World War he appeared in a number of films including George Robey Turns Anarchist (1914), £66.13.9 For Every Man Woman And Child (1916), Blood Tells (1916), Doing His Bit (1917) and George Robey’s Day Off (1918). Offered a knighthood after the war, he declined, accepting the CBE instead. In 1932 he moved to the world of operetta, appearing as Menelaus in A.P. Herbert’s version of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène with Max Reinhardt as producer and C.B. Cochran as manager. It was an usual role for Robey and he had to tone down his natural exuberance accordingly. He did so magnificently. James Agate commented, “A miracle of accommodation like that of a trombone player obliging with a pianissimo.” He made more films in-between comedy and opera including The Rest Cure (1923), One Arabian Night (1923), Don Quixote (1923), The Prehistoric Man (1924), The Barrister (1928), Safety First (1928), The Bride (1928), Mrs Mephistopheles (1928), The Temperance Fête (1932), Marry Me (1932) and Don Quixote (1933) as Sancho Panza. On February 28, 1935, Robey opened as Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I at His Majesty’s Theatre. First night nerves got to him, but although he stumbled over his lines, he won over the audience. It was agreed that the man from the music halls could play the classic character as well as the buffoon. Nine years later he appeared in Laurence Olivier’s award-winning production of Henry V (1944). His last film was The Pickwick Paper s (1952), a film described by the Daily Mirror “as welcome as the sun in the morning and as British as a cup of tea.” He finally accepted a knighthood shortly before his death. Sadly, Robey never came to terms with retirement. Each evening he would sit before a mirror applying his make-up, just as if he had a show to perform.

  CAUSE: He died of natural causes in Saltdean, Sussex.

  Dany Robin

  Born April 14, 1927

  Died May 25, 1995

  Beautiful Carry On ner. Born in Clamart, France, she began her career as a ballerina before making the move into movies and appeared in several films including Les Portes De La Nuit (1946), Les Amoreux Sont Seuls Au Monde (1948), Le Soif Des Hommes (1950), Une Histoire D’Amour (1951), Les Amants De Minuit (1953), The Anatomy Of Love (1953), Un Acte D’Amour (1954), Paris Coquin (1956), Jacqueline, the girlfriend of the Black Fingernail in Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head (1966) and Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969) after which she retired. Her pets included a donkey and five crocodiles. Formerly married to actor Georges Marchal, the Catholic Dany later (November 23, 1969) married showbiz agent Michael Sullivan (b. London, October 23, 1921). Sullivan represented Sid James, who twice clumsily tried to seduce Dany when he was staying chez Sullivan near Marbella. Sullivan’s other clients included Dick Emery, Mike & Bernie Winters, Jon Pertwee, Shirley Bassey and Jack Douglas.

  CAUSE: She died in a fire aged 68. Coincidentally, her home had burned down shortly before she appeared in Topaz.

  Edward G. Robinson

  (EMANUEL GOLDENBERG)

  Born December 12, 1893

  Died January 26, 1973

  Cinematic tough guy. Born at 671 Strada Cantemier, in the Jewish section of Bucharest, Rumania, the family moved to America in 1903 and young Manny grew up in New York on the lower East Side. He was torn between careers as a rabbi or an attorney but in the end the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd won out and he became an actor, making his stage début in late 1912 in The Pillars Of Society, a production put on by the American Academy of Dramatic Art where he was studying. His professional début came in April 1913 in Binghampton, New York, playing Sato in Paid In Full at a salary of $25 a week. His stage name came from a long since forgotten English play called The Passerby, in which one of the characters was called Robinson. The Edward came from King Edward VII and the G was a reminder of his real origins. On August 12, 1915, he made his début on Broadway, playing André Lemaire in a production of Under Fire at the Hudson Theater. Over the next 15 years Robinson was a reg
ular on the Broadway stage. His early film experiences did not endear him to the new medium and he was sacked by Samuel Goldfish (who later changed his name to Goldwyn) for not being up to scratch. In 1923 he played Domingo Escobar, an OAP, in The Bright Shawl, but it wasn’t until the advent of sound films that Robinson came into his own. In the meantime, he concentrated on the theatre. In Medina, Pennsylvania, on January 21, 1927, he married Gladys Lloyd (b. 1895, d. Culver City Hospital, June 6, 1971, from a stroke and a heart attack), a divorced gentile mother. The ceremony, performed by a justice of the peace, cost $25. On March 19, 1933, at Doctors’ Hospital, New York, their son, Edward G. Robinson, Jr, was born. He was to die, three wives and numerous problems later, just over a year after his father on February 26, 1974. Gladys Robinson suffered from mental problems and became a manic depressive who had electroshock therapy. On February 25, 1956, she filed for divorce from Robinson and on the same day Frances Chisholm Robinson also filed against Edward G. Robinson, Jr. The divorce settlement forced Robinson to sell his beloved art collection, one of the best in private hands anywhere in the world. On January 16, 1958, he married (taller) divorcée Jane Bodenheim Adler (b. 1921) in Arlington, Virginia. They were together when he died. In July 1930 Robinson began to shoot a gangster film for Warner Bros directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Originally cast as Otero, Robinson persuaded LeRoy to let him play Enrico Cesare ‘Rico’ Bandello. Little Caesar took 31 days to film, cost $250,000 and Robinson provided his own wardrobe. The most difficult scenes to shoot were those involving guns. Robinson was a pacifist who hated armoury and every time he fired a gun, he blinked. To get the shot he wanted, LeRoy taped Robinson’s eyelid open. When it came for Rico to be shot, metal plates were taped to Robinson’s stomach and blank, but still dangerous, machine bullets were fired at the actor. It was only the skill of George Daly, the special effects man, that stopped Robinson from really being shot. The actor couldn’t, unsurprisingly, keep still and Daly compensated for his movements when he fired the machine gun. Following the première in New York on January 22, 1931, Robinson became the hottest star at Warner Bros. He set the standard by which cinematic gangsters would be measured and appeared in Night Ride as Tony Garotta, A Lady To Love (1930) as Tony, Smart Money as Nick ‘The Barber’ Venizelos, Five Star Final (1931) as journalist Joseph Randall, Two Seconds as John Allen, Tiger Shark (1932) as Mike Mascarenhas, Silver Dollar (1932) as Yates Martin, The Little Giant (1933) as James Francis ‘Bugs’ Ahearn, I Loved A Woman (1933) as John Hayden, The Man With Two Faces (1934) as Damon Welles, Barbary Coast (1935) as Chamalis, Bullets Or Ballots (1936) as Johnny Blake, Kid Galahad (1937) as Nick Donati, The Last Gangster (1937) as Joe Krozac, A Slight Case Of Murder (1938) as Remy Marco, The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse (1938) as Dr T.S. Clitterhouse, I Am The Law (1938) as John Lindsay, Confessions Of A Nazi Spy (1939) as Ed Renard, Dr Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940) as Dr Paul Ehrlich, the German scientist who discovered a remedy for VD, Brother Orchid (1940) as Little John Sarto, A Dispatch From Reuters (1940) as Julius Reuter, Tales Of Manhattan (1942) as Avery ‘Larry’ L. Browne, Flesh And Fantasy (1943) as Marshall Tyler, Mr Winkle Goes To War (1944) as Wilbert Winkle, Double Indemnity as Barton Keyes, The Woman In The Window (1944) as Professor Richard Wanley and Scarlet Street as Christopher Cross. And then it all began to go wrong. On October 20, 1947, Robinson was filming All My Sons (1948) in which he played Joe Keller and learning his lines for Key Largo (1948) where he would be Johnny Rocco. At the same time, in Washington, DC, trouble was brewing at the House Un-American Activities Committee. Robinson was a paid-up member of the Democratic Party, an admirer of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and an unashamed liberal. When Adolphe Menjou testified before the committee he said he believed that in recent industrial disputes Robinson had favoured the ‘communist’ side, whatever that was. On October 20, former communist Howard Rushmore, who had been film critic of the Daily Worker, identified two actors that the newspaper ‘knew’ were sympathetic to their aims. One was Charlie Chaplin, the other Edward G. Robinson. (Rushmore would later go on to become editor-in-chief of the most notorious magazine ever published in Hollywood, Confidential. Not long after a libel trial, Rushmore and his wife were riding in a New York cab when he shot her before turning the gun on himself.) Damning testimony came from the simplistic president of the Screen Actors’ Guild, a man who tried – and failed – to make himself look intellectual by donning a pair of spectacles. His name was Ronald Reagan. On October 27, Robinson testified that he had never been a communist or affiliated with communist organisations. He refused to drop anyone else in the mire, but was caught in a trap of smears and innuendo. Work began to dry up, but when he was offered the chance of signing a 26-page ‘confession’ admitting he had been duped by communist front organisations, Robinson told the messenger where to get off. He fell out with his friend J. Edgar Hoover over the smears. Robinson testified again on December 22, and again reiterated that he was not, nor had he ever been, a communist or fellow traveller. He was unable to leave America because his passport had expired and he could not get it renewed. Robinson found himself on what was unhumorously called a “gray (sic) list”: he wasn’t blacklisted, but he wasn’t in the clear either. It all became too much for the diminutive actor. On April 30, 1952, Robinson appeared before the HUAC for the third time. He finally admitted that he had supported organisations, albeit unknowingly, that were communist fronts and named names. The HUAC then admitted that they had never had any evidence against Robinson, and thought he was a “well-meaning individual” but a “No 1 sucker”. It had cost Robinson $100,000 to clear himself of all ‘charges’ and he was now desperate to get back to work. His post-Hearing films included: Vice Squad (1953) as Captain Barnaby, Big Leaguer (1953) as John B. ‘Hans’ Lobert, The Glass Web (1953) as Henry Hayes, The Violent Men (1955) as Lew Wilkison, Tight Spot (1955) as Lloyd Hallett, A Bullet For Joey (1955) as Inspector Raoul Leduc, Illegal (1955) as Victor Scott, Hell On Frisco Bay (1956) as Victor Amat, The Ten Commandments (1956) as Dathan, Seven Thieves (1960) as Theo Wilkins, My Geisha as Sam Lewis, The Prize as Dr Max Stratman/Professor Walter Stratman, Robin And The 7 Hoods (1964) as Big Jim, Cheyenne Autumn (1964) as Carl Schurz and Mackenna’s Gold (1969) as Old Adams. He was never even nominated for an Oscar.

  CAUSE: Robinson died of cancer in Hollywood, California. He was 79. He was buried in Beth-El Cemetery, 80-12 Cypress Hills Street, Ridgewood, New York 11385. On March 27, 1973, he was awarded a posthumous Oscar. Too little, too late.

  FURTHER READING: Little Caesar: A Biography Of Edward G. Robinson– Alan L. Gansberg (London: New English Library, 1985).

  Dame Flora Robson

  Born March 2 (Good Friday), 1902

  Died July 7, 1984

  Grande dame. Flora Robson was born in South Shields, Durham, the third of four daughters and sixth of seven children of marine engineer David Mather Robson and was educated at Palmer’s Green High School in London where her father had been posted. She moved to RADA (where she won the bronze medal) and began performing on stage on November 17, 1921, when she appeared at the Shaftesbury Theatre as Queen Margaret in Clemence Dane’s Will Shakespeare. She worked constantly for four years and then took a four-year break, during which she was unable to get theatrical work – producers rejected the 5́8½˝ Flora for not being pretty enough. She returned to the stage in October 1929. In the intervening time she worked as welfare officer for Shredded Wheat although influenza chained her to her bed for a depressing month. Once she was back, at the behest of her fiancé Tyrone Guthrie, work came steadily and in October 1933 she joined the Old Vic–Sadler’s Wells Company. Two years earlier, she had appeared in her first film, Dance Pretty Lady (1931). Her other films included Catherine The Great (1934), Fire Over England (1936) as Queen Elizabeth I, Wuthering Heights (1939) as Ellen Dean, Romeo & Juliet (1954), 55 Days At Peking (1962), Murder At The Gallop (1963), Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines (1964) and, bizarrely, Clash Of The Titans (1981). She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy
Award for Saratoga Trunk (1946) but lost out to Anne Baxter for The Razor’s Edge (1946). She had affairs with Robert Donat and Paul Robeson but never married.

  CAUSE: She died in Brighton, Sussex, aged 82, of natural causes. She left £128,526.

  FURTHER READING: Flora Robson – Janet Dunbar (London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1960).

  Patricia Roc

  (FELICIA MIRIAM URSULA HEROLD)

  Born June 7, 1915

  Died December 30, 2003

  “Goddess of the Odeons”. Londonborn Patricia Roc was the daughter of a paper merchant but, while a baby, she was adopted by a Dutch-Belgian stockbroker, Andre Riese and grew up believing him to be her real father. She did not discover the truth until she was 34. She was educated at Francis Holland School at Regent’s Park before moving to Bartram Gables School at Broadstairs, Kent and then for a while attended RADA. Then she travelled to France for a test at the Joinville studios but even though she spoke French fluently the studio decided not to go ahead with the production. Bitterly disappointed, she returned to England and was spotted by the impresario Sydney Carroll which led to the West End play Nuts In May, where one of Alexander Korda’s casting directors noticed her. It was to be her only stage experience. She made her film début in as Marina in The Rebel Son, based on Taras Bulba, and then as Mary Lenley in The Gaunt Stranger, based on Edgar Wallace’s story The Ringer. In she married Dr Murray Laing, a Canadian osteopath 20 years her senior, but the match ended in divorce in 1944. Between 1939 and 1943 Patricia Roc appeared in more than a dozen films, including a version of Eden Philpotts’ play The Farmer’s Wife (1941) as Sibley, and We’ll Meet Again (1943) with Vera Lynn, in which she played Ruth. Her big break came as Celia Crowson in Millions Like Us (1943), written and directed by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat and co-starring Anne Crawford and Joy Shelton. Critics generally regard it as the best film made during the war about the home front. 5́ 4˝ Roc played a young widow (her airman husband, Gordon Jackson, was killed in action) who worked in a factory to help the war effort. It made her a star overnight. Director Launder then made Two Thousand Women (1944), about an attempt to rescue British women from a concentration camp in France. The film starred Roc (as Rosemary Brown), Phyllis Calvert, Flora Robson, Renee Houston, Anne Crawford and Jean Kent. Love Story (1944) was the first of several pictures in which Roc played second fiddle to Margaret Lockwood. Roc was cast as Judy, the fiancée of Stewart Granger, a pilot losing his sight, who is stolen from under her nose by the terminally ill Lockwood. The film, featuring the popular ‘Cornish Rhapsody’, was a big hit, but Lockwood had the plum role. Patricia Roc was always the safe but sexy girl. “I was the bouncy, sexy girl next door that mothers would like their sons to marry and the sons wouldn’t have minded, either.” This was borne out by a fan letter she once received from a teenage boy who invited her down to Devon for a weekend. “If it’s fine,” he wrote, “we could cycle into Exeter on Saturday afternoon. It’s only 15 miles.” While Margaret Lockwood got the rampantly sexy roles Patricia Roc got the virginal ones. In both The Wicked Lady (1945) and Jassy (1947), American censors called for retakes to cover up her embonpoint. In Madonna Of The Seven Moons (1944), Phyllis Calvert took the honours. Patricia Roc was loaned to Ealing Studios for Johnny Frenchman (1945), a tale of the rivalry between Cornish and Breton fishermen, and to Hollywood for Canyon Passage (1946), neither of which was a popular or critical success. In Tinseltown she had a brief affair with Ronald Reagan. Under contract to J. Arthur Rank, Roc believed that the organisation did not really know what to do with her. She refused to make Cardboard Cavalier, fearing that she would have been a stooge to the comedian Sid Field. In 1947, she played Mary, an orphan girl, in The Brothers, a melodramatic tale of superstition and jealousy among Skye fishermen at the turn of the century, and Julie Morgan, a North country lass, in So Well Remembered. In 1948, there were thankless roles in When The Bough Breaks as Lily, a London shop girl, and Mary Santell in One Night With You. The following year she appeared as Penelope Belman in The Perfect Woman but after that her contract with Rank was terminated by mutual consent. She married the French cameraman Andre Thomas in 1949 and moved to France to try to kick-start her career. It did not work, and by 1952 and Something Money Can’t Buy, her career in Britain was over. Thomas was infertile and during the filming of Something Money Can’t Buy Roc had an affair with her co-star Anthony Steel and became pregnant by him. Their son Michael was born and Thomas agreed to raise him but collapsed and died of a stroke when the boy was only two. In 1960 she made her last film Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons opposite George Sanders. In 1964 she married Walter Reif, a Viennese businessman, and the couple moved to the Swiss resort of Minusio, overlooking Lake Maggiore, in 1976. Reif died in 1986.