CAUSE: She died aged 81 in New York City’s Jamaica Hospital of undisclosed causes.
Conrad Veidt
Born January 22, 1893
Died April 3, 1943
German expressionist. Born in Berlin and educated at Berlin High School, 6́ 2˝ Veidt studied under Max Reinhardt, making his stage début in 1913 and later working with Emil Jannings. He made his movie début in 1917 but the first film in which Veidt was really noticed was Das Kabinett Des Dr Caligari (1919), in which he played the part of Cesare. He later bemoaned this: “No matter what roles I play, I can’t get Caligari out of my system.” He travelled to Hollywood but returned to Germany when sound films became popular. In 1934 he left Germany with his Jewish wife following the rise of the Nazis and settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1939. A return visit to Germany in 1935 almost caused an international incident. The Nazis kidnapped him, claiming he was too ill to return to Britain, but Gaumont British sent their own medical experts to examine the actor in preparation for his journey. He played a number of Nazis on screen, most notably Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1942). Veidt, whose friends called him Connie and who was superstitious about the number 17, was married three times.
CAUSE: He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, aged 50. He was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery & Mausoleum, Secor Road, Hartsdale, New York 10530.
Lupe Velez
(MARíA GUADALUPE VéLEZ DE VILLALOBOS)
Born July 18, 1908
Died December 14, 1944
‘The Mexican Spitfire’. Born in San Luis Potosi, a suburb of Mexico City, the daughter of a soldier. According to some accounts her mother was a prostitute. As soon as she became a teenager, she was sent to the Our Lady of the Lake Convent in San Antonio, Texas. A less than enthusiastic student, she left after two years when her father died. She entered showbiz where she was popular with the audiences and the stage door johnnies who paid for her favours with dinner and other inducements. She also worked as a stripper for a time. In 1924 she made her film début and three years later she was in Hollywood. Her first five years were spent in dramatic roles before she switched to comedy. The (5)߰Velez received her nickname because of a 1939 film of that name. However, her off-screen antics more than made up for her on-screen ones. The 37-26-35 actress changed lovers as regularly as most people change their underwear. Although her bed partners included some of the best-known names in Hollywood, there was nothing snobbish about her attitude towards her lovers. Among her paramours were actors Tom Mix (whom she dumped when his star began to wane), Clark Gable (who dumped her because of her reputation for revealing the sexual prowess or otherwise of her lovers: “She’ll be all over town telling everyone what a lousy lay I am”), Charlie Chaplin (in 1928), Russ Columbo, Victor Fleming and Gary Cooper. Velez and Cooper slept together the first night they met and their passion was so hot that he began to fall asleep on set. She spent $500 a month on telephone calls to him and they often practised phone sex. It was a tempestuous relationship and during one argument with Cooper at a railway station she tried to shoot him. Fortunately, her aim was poor. Her other paramours included John Gilbert (in 1931, although he went back to his ex-wife, who didn’t want him), Randolph Scott (who left her for Cary Grant) and Johnny Weissmuller, whom she secretly married on October 8, 1933. Their first (of many) separations came on January 24, 1934. She filed for divorce on January 2, 1935, though they were reconciled, but she again filed in early 1938 and this time the divorce was granted. Velez also dated boxers Jack Dempsey and Jack Johnson and assorted producers, directors and stage-hands. In fact, it was pretty much a case of whoever took her fancy at the time. By 1943 Lupe’s acting had become a parody of itself. The New York Times said of her appearance in Ladies Day (1943): “Miss Velez doesn’t act too well, but she acts loud; her display of Latin temperament resembles the law of molecular motion.”
CAUSE: Always temperamental and always theatrical she decided to commit suicide and planned it with all the precision of a military campaign. Sadly, like the best-laid plans of mice and actresses, it went awry. On November 27, 1944, Lupe announced her engagement to her latest lover, a 27-year-old actor called Harald Ramond. However, she didn’t tell Ramond either that they were engaged or that she was pregnant. She assumed he would be both honoured and delighted to marry her. He wasn’t on either count. Lupe realised the scandal and shame of being an unwed mother in Hollywood would ruin her career. (When Loretta Young became pregnant by Clark Gable she took herself off for a year and returned with an ‘adopted’ daughter. It was only recently that the truth was revealed.) Lupe broke off the brief engagement. As a Catholic, abortion was unthinkable. The only way out was death. (Oddly, Catholics also believe suicide to be a mortal sin.) On December 14, 1944, Lupe had her hair and nails done and tidied her bedroom at 732 North Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills. She ate a spicy Mexican meal before donning her favourite blue satin pyjamas and then swallowing 75 Seconal tablets, washed down with the finest brandy. She placed her hands across her chest and imagined how serene and beautiful she would look when discovered by her maid in the morning. Things didn’t go quite according to plan. The effect of the spicy food, the booze and the pills made Lupe feel woozy and sick. She got up and staggered to the bathroom, leaving a trail of vomit on the bedroom floor. As she reached the bathroom she slipped and fell headfirst into the toilet. She drowned in her Egyptian Chartreuse Onyx Hush-Flush Model deluxe commode. Ironically her house was called the Casa Felicitas – the Happy Home.
FURTHER READING: Lupe Velez And Her Lovers– Floyd Conner (New York: Barricade Books, 1993).
King Vidor
Born February 8, 1894
Died November 1, 1982
Creative director. Born in Galveston, Texas, 5́11½˝ King Wallis Vidor became interested in cinema when still a small child and in order to be near his beloved films, he began working in a cinema collecting tickets and occasionally operating the projector. In 1915 he married actress Florence Arto, a 5́4½˝ brunette (b. Houston, Texas, July 23, 1895, as Florence Cobb, d. Pacific Palisades, California, November 3, 1977) and they headed for Tinseltown to seek their fame and fortune, he behind the cameras, she in front. She landed a deal with Vitagraph Pictures and appeared in numerous silent films becoming very successful. She and Vidor separated in 1923 and were divorced two years later. On August 20, 1928, she married violinist Jascha Heifetz in New York. They divorced on January 3, 1946, after Heifetz claimed she had belittled his musical talent. On September 8, 1926, Vidor married actress Eleanor Boardman but they were divorced on April 11, 1933, because of his adultery. He later married writer Elizabeth Hill (b. 1901, d. August 21, 1978, of heart failure due to anorexia nervosa) but they, too, separated in 1966 and she left her house and its contents to her Alsatian. After directing shorts Vidor made his first feature film, The Turn In The Road (1919). Vidor formed his own production company and called it Vidor Village before joining MGM where his reputation was made with The Big Parade (1925). His next big success was The Crowd (1928) for which he received the first of his five Oscar nominations. From the mid-Thirties he made films for whichever commercial theme was in vogue. His last film was the flop Solomon And Sheba (1959). He busied himself in the last years of his life trying to solve the mystery of the death of fellow director William Desmond Taylor.
CAUSE: He died aged 88 of heart failure at Willow Creek Ranch, Paso Robles, California.
Herve Villechaize
Born April 23, 1943
Died September 4, 1993
TV’s most famous dwarf. One of the most popular television shows of the Seventies was Fantasy Island starring Ricardo Montalban as Mr Roarke and Paris-born Herve Jean-Pierre Villechaize as Tattoo. After the pilot TV executives wanted to ditch 310” Villechaize in favour of a sexy girl but producer Aaron Spelling fought for the little actor and the network honchos relented. However, Villechaize was not one for gratitude; he believed he was the star of the show because of his line, “The plane! The plane!” Villechaize’s beha
viour became increasingly bizarre. He brought a gun to the set and carried it everywhere. Outside his trailer he hung a sign that said “The Doctor Of Sex”. When the trailer was occupied he turned the sign over and it read “The Doctor Is In”. Eventually, his behaviour became too much and Villechaize was sacked in 1983 over a pay dispute. He also played Scaramanga’s servant, Nick Nack, in the Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) and appeared as a king in the unfunny comedy The Forbidden Zone (1980).
CAUSE: Because of his size, Villechaize was often sick. Born with small lungs, in 1992 he almost died of pneumonia. He was also a martyr to ulcers and a spastic colon. His physical ailments wore him down and, on September 3, 1993, he shot himself in the chest at his home, 11537 West Killion Street, North Hollywood, California 91601. He was taken to Medical Center of North Hollywood at 12629 Riverside Drive, where he expired the next day at 3.40am. He was 50. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea off Point Fermin on September 14, 1993.
Luchino Visconti
Born November 2, 1906
Died March 17, 1976
Noble director. Born in Milan, Italy, the son of a musician and a notable beauty. He grew up with visits to the pictures a regular outing. Indeed, his family had their own box in the cinema. Visconti had left-wing views, which put him at odds with Mussolini, and he joined the anti-Fascist movement. In 1937 he travelled to America but wasn’t happy and returned to Italy, though he didn’t make his first feature film until Ossessione (1942). He made films only rarely but his Rocco E I Suoi Fratelli (1960) made a star of Alain Delon. Nine years later, his film La Caduta Degli Dei (1969) was a success, so Hollywood agreed to finance his film of Thomas Mann’s tale of homosexuality Morte A Venezia/Death In Venice (1971), although initially the studios wanted to make the subject of the lead character’s affections a girl rather than a boy.
CAUSE: In 1972 he suffered a stroke that left him paralysed down the left side. Taken to a Zurich sanatorium to recover, he refused to give up smoking (he was on 100 cigarettes a day) and recovered within a month to direct Ludwig (1972), walking with the aid of a stick, which he loathed. His last film, L’Innocente (1976), was directed from a wheelchair. Visconti died of influenza and a heart complaint in Rome aged 69. His funeral two days later was attended by various famous faces including the President of Italy and Burt Lancaster.
Erich von Stroheim
Born September 22, 1885
Died May 12, 1957
‘The Man You Love To Hate’. The bullet-headed director and actor was born in Vienna, Austria, as Erich Oswald Stroheim. The ‘von’ was an affectation and, contrary to studio biographies, his real name wasn’t Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria Stroheim von Nordenwall and he wasn’t the scion of an old Prussian family. In his pre-screen days he was a manager in a hat factory run by his Jewish father, not a dashing cavalry officer as often reported. In November 1909 he emigrated to America and worked at various menial jobs. In 1913 he married Margaret Knox but they divorced the following year. In 1915 he joined D.W. Griffith’s outfit, playing a black extra in The Birth Of A Nation (1915). He married May Jones in 1917 but they were divorced the same year. He had one son by her. That year he played a Prussian officer for the first time, a role he was to reprise on several occasions, earning him his nickname. Following the end of World War I his career moved onto a different plane and he began to direct films. Stroheim was a perfectionist down to the smallest detail, which meant that films could take as much as a year to produce. He spent so much money that the studio began referring to him as $troheim. In 1919 he married Valerie Germonprez and had a son by her. His film Greed (1925) would, in its original incarnation, have lasted seven or, according to some sources, nine hours! His next project was also so long it was released in two sections, three years apart – The Merry Widow (1925) and The Honeymoon (1928)! In 1926 he became an American citizen and was hailed as Best Director of the Year by his colleagues. He was hired by Gloria Swanson to direct her in Queen Kelly (1929), a film paid for by her lover, Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of the future President. After Stroheim had spent $600,000 on the project he was unceremoniously sacked. He found it nigh on impossible to get anyone to hire him as a director so he returned to acting. In 1935 he went bankrupt and began writing as well as acting to earn money. His best-known role was probably playing opposite Swanson as Norma Desmond’s faithful old butler and ex-lover Max Von Mayerling in Sunset Blvd. (1950), for which he was nominated for an Oscar. An excerpt from Queen Kelly appears in the film. During that decade Stroheim appeared in several French films and wrote three novels.
CAUSE: He died of cancer in Maurepas, Seine-et-Oise, France, aged 71.
W
Anton Walbrook
(ADOLPH ANTON WILHELM WOHLBRüCK)
Born November 19, circa 1896
Died August 9, 1967
Born in Vienna, Walbrook came from a family of clowns but opted to try his luck in legitimate theatre. He worked with Max Reinhardt before plunging into German films, beginning with Mater Dolorosa (1922), Salto Mortale as Robby, Die Fünf Verfluchten Gentlemen (1931), Melodie Der Liebe as Kapellmeister, Drei Von Der Stempelstelle (1932) and Walzerkrieg (1933). Like many, he fled the Nazis and landed in Britain, becoming a subject in 1947. His films included: Viktor Und Viktoria (1933) as Robert, Victoria The Great (1937) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938) both as Prince Albert, Forty-Ninth Parallel (1941) as Peter, Dangerous Moonlight (1941) as Stefan Radetzky, The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp (1943) as Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, The Red Shoes (1948) as Boris Lermontov, La Ronde (1950), Lola Montès (1955) as Ludwig I, Saint Joan (1957) as Cauchon and I Accuse! (1958) as Major Esterhazy.
CAUSE: He died in Garatshausen, Germany, of a heart attack, aged 70.
Helen Walker
Born July 17, 1920
Died March 10, 1968
Tragic starlet. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, she seemed destined for stardom after playing opposite Alan Ladd in Lucky Jordan (1942) as Jill Evans. She also appeared in The Good Fellows (1943) as Ethel Hilton, The Man In Half Moon Street (1944) as Eve Brandon, Abroad With Two Yanks (1944) as Joyce Stuart, Murder, He Says (1945) as Claire Matthews, Brewster’s Millions (1945) as Peggy Gray, Murder In The Music Hall (1946) as Millicent, Her Adventurous Night (1946) as Constance, People Are Funny (1946) as Corey Sullivan and Nightmare Alley (1947) as psychologist Lilith Ritter. Then it all went horribly wrong. On New Year’s Eve 1946 she was driving a car that was involved in an accident, resulting in the death of a soldier. Walker was badly injured in the incident and lost work, as a result of which she took to the bottle and became an alcoholic. As booze took over her life she also became paranoid and mentally unstable; in 1955 she wrapped a friend’s birthday present in her old publicity photographs. Her penultimate film was Problem Girls (1953).
CAUSE: She died of cancer aged 47, forgotten, in North Hollywood, California.
Kim Walker
Born June 19, 1968
Died March 6, 2001
The most ironic death in this book. Kim Anne Walker, the daughter of Herbert H. Walker and Ruth Mary Weigel, made her film début in Deadly Weapon (1989) playing Traci but it was her performance as Heather ‘#1’ Chandler, the nastiest of the nasty Heathers in the 1989 film of that name that made her for a time well known. She dated co-star Christian Slater for two years. She also appeared in Say Anything… (1989) as Sheila, Nervous Ticks (1992) as Janice, Somewhere In The City (1998) as Molly and Killing Cinderella (2000) before retiring from acting. But it was her biting lines in Heathers such as “You’re such a pillowcase!” and “Did you eat a brain tumour for breakfast?” for which she will be remembered. She was unmarried.
CAUSE: Ironically, it was to be a brain tumour that killed her. On January 10, 1999, she had a craniotomy to try and remove the tumour but without success. Kim died at 6.30am on March 6, 2001 aged only 32 of cerebral herniation and malignant glioma at her home in Studio City, Los Angeles, California 91604. On March 10, she was buried in Pinelawn Memorial Park, Fa
rmingdale, New York 11735.
Robert Walker
Born October 13, 1918
Died August 28, 1951
Misjudged thespian? Born in Salt Lake City Hospital, Utah, Robert Hudson Walker was the son of an uncaring journalist father, Horace (b. 1882, d. January 13, 1964) and a distant mother, Zella (b. June 1886, d. July 9, 1976). At school Walker behaved badly, often getting into fights. He was also small for his age and had very bad eyesight. When he was 9 he was cheated out of 50¢ by a man whose lawn he offered to cut. It left him with a lifelong mistrust of older men. Two years later, he got his first taste of acting but also threatened suicide when he didn’t get his own way. His parents arranged for him to see a child psychiatrist. However, his acting skills came to the fore and the shrink never got to the bottom of the boy’s problem. In September 1932 he enrolled in the prestigious Davis San Diego Military and Naval Academy. After a while Walker’s belligerent side resurfaced and he was often in trouble with his fellow cadets and the authorities. In January 1935, to his amazement and joy, he won an award as Best Actor in San Diego County for his performance in the play The Other Side. That led to an offer of a scholarship at the Pasadena Playhouse but he had to defer for a year when he failed to graduate because of his poor academic record. At the end of the year, he decided to try out for the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York instead. He was accepted after auditioning five days after his 19th birthday. On January 2, 1938, he summoned up the courage to approach a girl he had fancied for some time. Her name was Phylis Lee Isley (b. Tulsa, Oklahoma, March 2, 1919), later to become world famous as Jennifer Jones and Mrs Robert Walker. They married exactly a year after they first met and, at first, seemed like the ideal couple. They had two sons: Robert Jr (b. Jamaica Hospital, Queens, New York, April 15, 1940 at 5am) and Michael (b. March 13, 1941). In 1939 the couple travelled west to seek their fame and fortune. Phylis was signed on June 25, 1939, to a six-month contract with Republic Pictures. Walker had no such luck and after intervention by Phylis’ father they returned to the Big Apple, where their first child was born. Walker was hired for $25 to appear in the NBC radio soap opera Yesterday’s Children. That led to regular work in soaps. In 1941 the couple’s happiness was wrecked – although they didn’t yet know it – when mogul David O. Selznick started to take a very personal interest in Phylis. Walker was classified 4F for war service because of his poor eyesight. Meanwhile, on December 9, 1942, it was announced that Selznick had cast Walker’s wife in The Song Of Bernadette (1944). Thereafter the studio boss began his seduction of Jennifer Jones in earnest. Walker was flourishing at MGM, where he had made a name for himself in Bataan (1943). Audiences took to his look, an idiosyncrasy created mainly by his inability to focus properly. As Jones became more and more ensconced with Selznick, Walker became more and more belligerent. MGM studio chief Dore Schary recalled: “Bob began drinking and asserting his vigour and masculinity by going into bars and brawling with men who were bigger and hit harder.” Walker appeared in Madame Curie (1943), See Here, Private Hargrove (1944) and Since You Went Away (1944), which featured several love scenes with his estranged wife, much to the distress of them both. Selznick seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in their discomfiture. Walker’s other features included Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), The Clock (1945), What Next, Corporal Hargrove (1945), The Sailor Takes A Wife (1946), The Sea Of Grass (1947), Song Of Love (1947), One Touch Of Venus (1948), Vengeance Valley (1951), Strangers On A Train (1951) and My Son John (1952). Walker and Jones were divorced on June 20, 1945. He hit the bottle with enthusiasm and was often arrested for drunken behaviour. Schary gave him an ultimatum: his career or the booze. Walker was subsequently admitted to the Menninger Clinic, where he stayed for 11 months. On July 8, 1948, Walker married Barbara Ford (b. December 16, 1922), the daughter of director John Ford. They separated five weeks later. Ford was granted a divorce on December 16, 1948, on the grounds of extreme cruelty. Rumours circulated that Walker had thumped his new wife and Ford’s friends John Wayne and Ward Bond had to be restrained from beating him up. The actor knew what was wrong with him but was too scared to admit the truth. “I basically felt inadequate, unwanted, and unloved since I was born. I was always trying to make an escape from life. I was an aggressive little character, but what nobody knew but me was my badness was only a cover-up for a basic lack of self-confidence, that I really was more afraid than frightening.”
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 175