Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: Toomey died aged 93 of natural causes in the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital, 23450 Calabasas Road, Woodland Hills, San Fernando, California.

  Spencer Tracy

  Born April 5, 1900

  Died June 10, 1967

  ‘ A man’s man’. Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and, following a Jesuit upbringing, intended to become a priest. On January 11, 1921 he matriculated at Ripon College, Wisconsin, where he first became interested in acting. He had a superb memory and was the only student to audition without reference to the script. On April 16, 1922 he changed tack and enrolled in New York’s Academy of Dramatic Arts. The following year, on September 12, 1923, he married Louise Treadwell (b. 1896, d. November 13, 1983). They were still together at his death almost 44 years later although they lived separate lives. The devoutly Catholic Tracy would never consider a divorce. On June 26, 1924 son John was born totally deaf. He was to suffer ill-health throughout his life and was confined to a nursing home. Daughter Susie was born eight years later on July 1, 1932. He made his film début in Up The River (1930) with Humphrey Bogart who commented: “Spencer does it, that’s all. Feels it. Says it. Talks. Listens. He means what he says when he says it, and if you think that’s easy, try it.” Tracy was a heavy drinker and had a fiery temper when roused. Publicists had successfully managed to keep his behaviour out of the press. In 1933 he began an affair with Loretta Young while filming A Man’s Castle (1933). The romance lasted a year and was featured in fan magazines but ended when Tracy refused to get a divorce. Tracy’s drinking led him into trouble. One night he was so drunk that Fox stagehands locked him in the studio. The next day, he woke and began smashing up the set of Dante’s Inferno (1935), his last film for Fox. When he passed out again studio guards entered the set and put him in a straitjacket and frogmarched him away. Accountants estimated he did about $100,000 worth of damage. During filming on March 11, 1935 he was arrested in Yuma, Arizona, for drunken behaviour in a hotel and wrecking furniture. Tracy joined MGM where he spent the next 24 years. During the filming of Mannequin (1938) he was rumoured to be romancing co-star Joan Crawford but this time he didn’t leave Louise and the children. He won consecutive Oscars for his portrayal of Manuel in Captains Courageous (1937) and Father Edward J. Flanagan in Boys Town (1938), an achievement that wouldn’t be equalled until Tom Hanks in 1993 and 1994. Tracy was Oscar nominated for San Francisco (1936) as Father Tim Mullin, Father Of The Bride (1950) as Stanley T. Banks, Bad Day At Black Rock (1955) as John J. Macreedy, The Old Man And The Sea (1958) as The Old Man, Inherit The Wind (1960) as Henry Drummond, Judgment At Nuremberg (1961) as Judge Dan Haywood and for his final film Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? (1967) as Matt Drayton. In 1942 he began filming Woman Of The Year (1942) as Sam Craig playing opposite Katharine Hepburn. It was to be the start of one of Hollywood’s greatest romances lasting until his death. She said of Tracy: “To most men I’m a nuisance because I’m so busy I get to be a pest but Spencer is so masculine that once in a while he rather smashes me down, and there’s something nice about me, when I’m smashed down.” However, the affair didn’t get off to a great start as evidenced by their first encounter when Joseph L. Mankiewicz introduced Kate to Tracy. She commented on their height disparity, “I’m afraid I’m a little tall for you. Mr Tracy.” “Don’t worry, Kate,” Mankiewicz said, “he’ll soon cut you down to size.” They were to make just nine films together. Said writer Garson Kanin: “It was always Tracy and Hepburn. I chided him once about his insistence on first billing. ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Well, after all,’ I argued, ‘she’s the lady. You’re the man. Ladies first.’ He said, ‘This is a movie, chowderhead, not a lifeboat.’”

  CAUSE: Fifteen days after the wrap of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? Tracy died of heart failure aged 67 at home in Beverly Hills, California. The official version has him found by his housekeeper slumped over the kitchen table at 6am. Hepburn claims he died at 3am which probably means she was with him. She did not attend his funeral at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Hollywood and was not mentioned in his will.

  FURTHER READING: Tracy And Hepburn – Garson Kanin (New York: Bantam, 1972); Spencer Tracy – Bill Davidson (London: Sphere, 1989); An Affair To Remember The Remarkable Love Story Of Katharine Hepburn And Spencer Tracy – Christopher Andersen (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1997).

  Claire Trevor

  (CLAIRE WEMLINGER)

  Born March 8, 1909

  Died April 8, 2000

  ‘The Queen of Film Noir’. Born in New York City, her mother came from Northern Ireland and her father from France. Her father ran a clothing business but was ruined by the Great Depression and Trevor went out to work to help support the family. She also enrolled at Columbia University and then the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After being spotted on Broadway in 1932 she was given a five-year contract by 20th Century Fox in 1933. In Baby Takes A Bow (1934) she played Shirley Temple’s mother, then appeared opposite Spencer Tracy in Dante’s Inferno (1935) and made six films with Allan Dwan. None of these films were particularly satisfactory and she left Fox. She was signed by Samuel Goldwyn and cast as Francey, Humphrey Bogart’s prostitute ex-girlfriend in William Wyler’s Dead End (1937). She was on screen for less than five minutes but that was still enough for her to receive a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. She then set off on a career of playing wanton women in films such as The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse (1938), I Stole A Million (1939), Street Of Chance (1942), Murder My Sweet (1944) and Born To Kill (1947). In 1948 she played Gaye Dawn in Key Largo (1948) and won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the alcoholic former nightclub singer lover of Johnny Rocco, a sadistic gangster (Edward G. Robinson). Six years later, she was again nominated by the academy for The High And The Mighty. She also appeared on television and radio winning an Emmy for Dodsworth. She was married three times. On July 27, 1938, she married radio producer Clark Andrews (b. November 21, 1908, d. Los Angeles, California, January 18, 1985). The couple was divorced on July 13, 1942 (the birthday of actor Harrison Ford), with the decree absolute being issued on July 24, 1943. In April 1943, she had married Lieutenant Cylos William Dunsmoore in Tijuana, Mexico, but they did not announce the marriage until her divorce from Andrews was finalised. They divorced in 1947. On November 14, 1948 (the birthday of Prince Charles), she married Milton H. Bren (b. Missouri, June 14, 1904), a producer. She was widowed on December 14, 1979 when Bren died in Los Angeles of a brain tumour. She had one son, Charles Cyclos (b. 1944), from the second marriage but he was killed in an aeroplane crash in 1978. In 1987 5́ 3˝ Trevor retired from acting.

  CAUSE: She died aged 91 in Newport Beach, California from respiratory problems.

  Marie Trintignant

  Born January 21, 1962

  Died August 1, 2003

  Talented scion. Marie Joséphine Innocente Trintignant was born the daughter of the actors Nadine Marquand (b. Nice, France, November 11, 1934) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (b. Piolenc, France, December 11, 1930) in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, France, and the sister of Vincent Trintignant (b. September 3, 1973). She was also the niece of Serge Marquand (b. France, March 12, 1930, d. Paris, France, September 4, 2004 of leukaemia) and Christian Marquand (b. Marseille, France, March 15, 1927, d. near Paris, France, November 22, 2000 of Alzheimer’s disease). She began her career aged five in the film Mon Amour, Mon Amour (1967) which was directed by her mother. Her other films included: Ça N’Arrive Qu’Aux Autres (1971), Défense De Savoir (1973), Le Voyage De Noces (1976), Série Noire (1979) as Mona, Premier Voyage (1980) as Marie Lambert, Un Matin Rouge (1982) as Marie, Les Îles (1983) as Nathalie, L’Été Prochain (1985) as Sidonie, Noyade Interdite (1987) as Isabelle, La Maison De Jeanne (1988) as Martine, Wings Of Fame (1990) as Bianca, Alberto Express (1990) as Clara, Les Marmottes (1993) as Lucie, Fugueuses (1995) as Marina, Les Apprentis (1995) as Lorette, Des Nouvelles Du Bon Dieu (1996) as Evangile, Portraits Chinois (1996) as Nina, Les Démons De Jésus (1997)
as Levrette, Harrison’s Flowers (2000) as Cathy, Petites Misères (2002) as Nicole, Una Lunga Lunga Lunga Notte D’Amore (2001) as Irene, Total Kheops (2002) as Lole, Les Marins Perdus (2003) as Mariette, Janis Et John (2003) as Brigitte Sterni and Ce Qu’Ils Imaginent (2004) as Juliette. Her mother directed her last television work, Colette, a 2004 mini-series. In 1998 she married the actor-director Samuel Benchetrit (b. 1973) and had a son Jules by him. She also had a son Roman (b. Paris, France, September 16, 1986) by the musician Richard Kolinka and another son Paul by François Cluzet (b. Paris, September 21, 1955) and a fourth son, Léon, by Mathias Othnin-Girard.

  CAUSE: On August 1, 2003 5́ 6˝ Trintignant got into a fight with her boyfriend, the 6́ 2˝ rock star Bertrand Bruno Lucien Cantat (b. Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantique, France, April 5, 1964), in their hotel room in Vilnius, Lithuania, during which she suffered fatal head injuries. He claimed that the injury (a cerebral oedema) was accidental but authorities disbelieved him and he was charged with intentional homicide. In March 2004, Cantat was convicted and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

  François Truffaut

  Born February 6, 1932

  Died October 21, 1984

  French auteur. Born in Paris, Truffaut suffered an unhappy childhood and was then dishonourably discharged from the army before becoming a film critic for Cahiers Du Cinema, where he began networking. He idolised Alfred Hitchcock, publishing a book on interviews with him and even considered at one time marrying his daughter. Eventually, he fell in love with a wealthy woman who financed his early work. His best-known films were: Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959), Jules Et Jim (1961), La Peau Douce (1964), Mata-Hari (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), L’Enfant Sauvage (1969), Les Deux Anglaises Et Le Continent (1971) and La Chambre Verte (1978).

  CAUSE: He died of cancer aged 62 in Paris.

  Lana Turner

  (JULIA JEAN MILDRED FRANCES TURNER)

  Born February 8, 1921

  Died June 29, 1995

  ‘The Sweater Girl’. Born in Wallace, Idaho, Turner may have been a year older than the above date suggests. She was discovered in the Top Hat Cafe aged 15 drinking a coke and bunking off school. (The canard that she was discovered in Schwab’s drugstore is simply that.) Her father had been murdered when she was nine following a card game in which he won a lot of money. Turner signed a contract with Mervyn Le Roy at MGM. She shaved her eyebrows for one film; they never grew back and so for the rest of her life they had to be pencilled in. Lana went on to marry seven times (her husbands included bandleader Artie Shaw and Tarzan actor Lex Barker) and make innumerable films (including A Star Is Born [1937], Calling Dr Kildare [1939], Ziegfeld Girl [1940], Johnny Eager [1942], The Postman Always Rings Twice [1946] and Peyton Place [1957]) but it was the incident on Good Friday (April 4) 1958 that will forever be associated with her. According to a close confidant speaking in 1996, Turner let her lesbian daughter, Cheryl, take the rap for a crime she had committed – the murder of her gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato at her Beverly Hills mansion at 730 North Bedford Drive. (Previously, the volatile and jealous thug had flown to England to confront Lana’s then co-star in Another Time, Another Place [1958], Sean Connery, over rumours the two were romantically linked. Connery dispatched him with a well-aimed punch in the mouth and Stompanato was deported soon afterwards.) Cheryl was arrested, tried and convicted of the murder but stories have long persisted that it was, in fact, Lana herself who plunged the knife into her lover’s stomach. Two of the participants from that rainy day are now dead and in her autobiography (written while her mother was still alive) Cheryl Crane sticks to the story that she was the killer. We will never really know the full truth about the event. Stompanato’s family believed that Lana had killed him and sued her for $1 million but accepted $20,000.

  CAUSE: In 1981 Lana was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Eleven years later, she was stricken with throat cancer but after treatment announced the following year that she had beaten the disease. It was not to be, and the cancer spread to her oesophagus. In September 1994, by then wheelchair bound, she received a lifetime achievement award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. On March 6, 1995, she went into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center suffering from a severely swollen neck and jaw. Her weight was down to a little over 6st. She was sent home and Cheryl moved in with her. She died at just past 10pm at home, suite 2006, 2170 Century Park East, Century City, California. She was 74 or possibly 75. Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered in Oahu, Hawaii.

  FURTHER READING: Lana: The Public And Private Lives Of Miss Turner – Joe Morella & Edward Z. Epstein (London: W.H. Allen, 1972); Always, Lana – Taylor Pero & Jeff Rovin (New York: Bantam, 1982); Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth – Lana Turner (London: New English Library, 1984); Detour, A Hollywood Tragedy: My Life With Lana Turner, My Mother – Cheryl Crane with Cliff Jahr (London: Michael Joseph, 1988); Lana: The Life And Loves Of Lana Turner – Jane Ellen Wayne (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995).

  Ben Turpin

  (BERNARD TURPIN)

  Born September 17, 1874

  Died July 1, 1940

  Cross-eyed comic. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, his career began as a comedian in vaudeville and then he signed to Essanay Studios in 1909 but was unable to fulfil his potential in a company more used to producing Westerns. He returned to the stage but gave the company another try in 1914, where he worked as a stooge for Charlie Chaplin. Again disappointed, he left in 1916 and the following year joined Mack Sennett, with whom he achieved his greatest fame. Turpin appeared in almost 180 films, most of them shorts, but as with many silent stars, found opportunities hard to come by with the advent of the talkies.

  CAUSE: He died aged 75 in Santa Monica, California, from heart disease.

  Dame Dorothy Tutin, CBE

  Born April 8, 1930

  Died August 6, 2001

  Adaptable actress. Born in London, Dorothy Tutin became a hit in the show business world with a performance in Graham Greene’s The Living Room that Kenneth Tynan, the critic, said was like being “ablaze like a diamond in a mine”. Her films included The Importance Of Being Earnest, The Beggar’s Opera, A Tale Of Two Cities, Cromwell and The Shooting Party. In 1972, she was given the Variety Club of Great Britain film actress award for her performance in Savage Messiah. On television, she played Anne Boleyn in the BBC’s Six Wives Of Henry VIII and in the Nineties she starred in Body And Soul. She appeared with her husband and daughter in Radio 4’s 1996 production of Somerset Maugham’s Before The Party. “I find what I do abominable,” she once said. “I pick away at myself because I am not as perfect as I’d like to be. I can’t make sense of myself at all. I don’t even like my name. It just doesn’t belong to me.” She married the actor Derek Waring (b. London, April 26, 1930) in 1963 and had one son, Nick (b. 1966), and one daughter, Amanda (b. 1965). Of Dame Dorothy, Sir John Mills said, “She was such a wonderful woman and a brilliant actress. She was one of the best we ever had. She could play almost anything.”

  CAUSE: She died aged 71 of leukaemia in the Edward VII Hospital in Midhurst, West Sussex.

  Judy Tyler

  (JUDITH HESS)

  Born October 9, 1933

  Died July 4, 1957

  What might have been. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the daughter of a big band trumpeter and a Ziegfeld Follies dancer, Judy won the Miss Stardust beauty pageant in 1949, which led to regular parts on television and the occasional stage show. In 1950 she married Colin Romoff but they divorced in 1956. She made her film début as Jo Thomas in Bop Girl Goes Calypso (1957). Her second and last film was the Elvis Presley vehicle Jailhouse Rock (1957) in which she played Peggy Van Alden. In May 1957 she married for the second time, to actor Greg Lafayette.