Weird Hollywood Rumors, Tragedies and Scandals

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Got these from a website, interesting read...

• "My fun days are over" - James Dean, shortly before his fatal car crash, 1955
  
• Gore Vidal on Grace Kelly: "Grace almost always laid the leading man . . . She was famous for that in this town."
  
• "Who do I **** to get off this picture?" - anonymous Hollywood actress, ca. 1930
  
• "[Howard] Hughes was the only man I ever knew who had to die to prove he had been alive." - Walter Kane
  
• In January 1959, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer was shot to death by a hunting buddy during a drunken brawl over a $50 debt. Police ruled the slaying a "justifiable homicide." Alfalfa was just 33 years old.
  
• "Every man I've known has fallen in love with Gilda and wakened with me." - Rita Hayworth
  
• The "It" Girl, Clara Bow, took on the entire University of Southern California "Thundering Herd" football team during a "gangbanging" weekend party. Bow's other conquests include Eddie Cantor, Gary Cooper and Bela Lugosi.
  
• "Judy [Garland] didn't die of anything, except wearing out. She just plain wore out." - Ray Bolger
  
• Louis B. Mayer's last words: "Nothing matters. Nothing matters."
  
• "Ginger Rogers was one of the worst, red-baiting, terrifying reactionaries in Hollywood." - Joseph Losey
  
• Jean Harlow's husband of two months, Paul Bern, blew his brains out after discovering he was impotent and couldn't satisfy the "Platinum Blonde."
  
• "I'd have liked to have gone to bed with Jean Harlow. She was a beautiful broad. The fellow who married her was impotent and he killed himself. I would have done the same thing." - Groucho Marx
  
• In 1932, Peg Entwistle became the first aspiring starlet to leap to her death off the "HOLLYWOOD" sign. In her suicide note, Entwistle wrote: "I'm afraid I'm a coward. I'm sorry for everything."
  
• "Cocaine isn't habit-forming. I should know, I've been using it for years." - Tallulah Bankhead
  
• John Garfield died of a heart attack in 1952, shortly after being placed on the Hollywood blacklist.
  
• Frank Sinatra had Suddenly pulled from theaters when he discovered that Lee Harvey Oswald had viewed the film a couple of days before he was arrested for assassinating JFK.
  
• "I must say Jack Palance was a drag. We were together in The Silver Chalice. The way he did his work was strange. He was a weird actor, and I didn't like working with him at all." - Virginia Mayo
  
• Marilyn Monroe died of a drug overdose on August 5, 1962, at the age of 36. According to the coroner, Monroe swallowed 47 tablets of Nembutal. The rumor mill has actively churned over the years, implicating just about everyone except the Maytag Repairman, including the CIA, JFK, RFK and the mob.
  
• "I'm going to die young. I just can't stop destroying myself." - John Belushi, shortly before his fatal overdose of cocaine and heroin
  
• James M. Cain on Maurice Chevalier: "He was in California at Paramount when I was, and for six months I ate lunch within 20 feet of him. He always ate alone . . . He was sour, scowling, and ill-humored, as well as a notorious tightwad."
  
• "There's one thing I want to make clear right off: my baby was a virgin the day she met Errol Flynn." - First line of The Big Love, written by Florence Aadland, about her 15-year-old daughter Beverly's relationship with the Robin Hood star
  
• Silent film stars Lillian and Dorothy Gish were more than sisters.
  
• Director Franco Zeffirelli called Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ "a product of that Jewish cultural scum in Los Angeles."
  
• Washed-up actor Sal Mineo (Rebel without a Cause) was knifed to death by a robber outside his West Hollywood apartment in 1974. He was 37 years old.
  
• Clara Blandick ("Auntie Em") took a one-way trip to the Land of Oz in 1962 by slipping a plastic bag over her head.
  
• "John Barrymore was a serious actor who did a great deal of research for all his parts, until, I guess, he was around 50. Then he started drinking heavily . . . So he drank himself to death. It took him 10 years." - John Carradine
  
• Once billed as the "next Garbo," actress Frances Farmer soon slipped into a nightmare world of drunkenness, drug abuse and years in a "sleazy mental institution."
  
• "I started at the top and worked my way down." - Orson Welles
  
• Roman Polanski on Faye Dunaway: "She was a gigantic pain in the ass. She demonstrated certifiable proof of insanity."
  
• After a boozy all-night revel in 1921, silent film comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was accused of raping and murdering a young model named Virginia Rappe. Rumor has it that an impotent Arbuckle ravaged Rappe with a Coke bottle and she died of internal injuries. Although he was acquitted after three trials, the rotund actor kissed his career goodbye, started drinking heavily and died in 1933 at the age of 46.
  
• "I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink." - Richard Burton
  
• In 1920, silent film actress Olive Thomas committed suicide in Paris after being unable to find a supply of cocaine. She was 20 years old.
  
• Melanie Griffith on Alfred Hitchcock: "He was macabre. When I was a little girl, he sent me a gift of a replica of my mother, Tippi Hedren, in a coffin. That was his idea of a joke. He had a sick sense of humor."
  
• "Why all the fuss? After all, I just played myself." - Errol Flynn, responding to positive reviews for The Sun Also Rises
  
• The actor who played Andy Hardy's father, Lewis Stone, died of a heart attack while chasing a gang of youths who were throwing rocks at his house.
  
• "A piece of s---." - Warner Bros. executive after viewing a preview of Bonnie & Clyde
  
• Clifford Odets on Marlon Brando: "I saw the boy in her [Stella Adler's] classrooms, and the genius Stella was talking about was not apparent to the naked eye. He looked to me like a kid who delivers groceries."
  
• Alan Ladd's career was in a nosedive at the time of his death at the age of 50. At first he was nearly killed by an "accidental" self-inflicted gunshot wound and then he succeeded in his mission with an overdose of sedatives.
  
• "I'm sick of carrying guns and beating up women." --James Cagney
  
• During the promotion tour of the film Tattoo, Bruce Dern swore that he and costar Maude Adams actually had sex during the film's final sex scenes, a claim vehemently denied by Adams.
  
• In 1935, 30-year-old actress Thelma Todd was found "slumped over the steering wheel of her Lincoln Phaeton Touring car." Her demise was declared an "accidental death from carbon monoxide poisoning," although everyone from her ex-husband to a jealous lover to Lucky Luciano's hit men has been implicated in the murder of the "Ice-Cream Blonde."
  
• "Everyone's just laughing at me. I hate it. Big breasts, big ass, big deal. Can't I be anything else?" - Marilyn Monroe
  
• Jack Lemmon once revealed that he was suffering from alcoholism when he played an alcoholic in Days of Wine and Roses.
  
• "I really blew everything after Footloose. I spent a fortune on drink and drugs. I had two houses and just gambled away most of my money." - Chris Penn
  
• Forgotten film star Florence Lawrence, once known as "The Imp Girl," committed suicide by swallowing ant paste in 1938 at the age of 52.
  
• "I've got America's best writer for $300 a week." --Jack L. Warner, on signing William Faulkner
  
• Jayne Mansfield, who "dabbled in devil worship," was decapitated in a car accident with a slow-moving tractor-trailer in 1967.
  
• Slogan for The Outlaw: "What are the two biggest reasons for Jane Russell's success?"
  
• When Anthony Perkins married Berinthia Berenson on Cape Cod in 1973, his pet collie, Murray, served as best man.
  
• "Put my ashes in a box and tell the messenger to bring them to Louis B. Mayer's office with a farewell message from me. Then when the messenger gets to Louis' desk, I want him to open the box and blow the ashes in the bastard's face." - B.P. Schulberg
  after Montgomery Clift's automobile accident in 1957, there were rumors of heavy drinking, drug abuse and strange behavior on and off the set. Clift died of a "heart attack" at the age of 45.
  
• "I'll never make another Hardy picture . . . I'm fed up with these dopey, insipid parts. How long can a guy play a jerk kid? I'm 27 years old. I've been divorced once and separated from my second wife. I have two boys of my own. I spent almost two years in the army. It's time Judge Hardy went out and bought me a double-breasted suit." - Mickey Rooney
  
• Silent film director Thomas Ince died of a "heart attack" aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht. However, rumor has it that Hearst suspected another yacht guest, silent film legend Charlie Chaplin, of having an affair with his mistress, Marion Davies. Hearst aimed his gun at Chaplin, and Ince was accidentally shot while trying to shield Chaplin and Davies. Chaplin denied being on the yacht.
  
• "You know [Errol] Flynn, he's either got to be fighting or f---ing." - Jack L. Warner
  
• The Eskimo who was showcased in Robert Flaherty's classic documentary, Nanook of the North [1922], died of starvation two years after Flaherty completed filming.
  
• On the eve of his death, living all alone in a cheap hotel, D.W. Griffith lamented, "I thought I was a great genius."
  
• William Randolph Hearst served as the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles? masterpiece Citizen Kane. Hearst's mistress Marion Davies' clitoris served as the inspiration for the mysterious "Rosebud," the dying words on Kane's lips.
  
• Errol Flynn's drinking buddies placed six bottles of whiskey in his casket.
  
• "A woman's ass is for her husband, not theatergoers." - Louis B. Mayer
  
• Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were more than just roommates when they shared a house together in the 1940s.
  
• One of England's most-promising directors, Michael Reeves, overdosed on sleeping pills in 1969. He was 25 years old.
  
• Natalie Wood's body was found floating facedown off Catalina Island in 1981, completing the Rebel Without a Cause curse that also claimed costars James Dean, Sal Mineo and Nick Adams. Was her death an "accidental drowning," suicide or murder?
  
• In 1958, Lana Turner's 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl, stabbed to death Lana's boyfriend, underworld mobster Johnny Stompanato. The slaying was declared a "justifiable homicide."
  
• Was 32-year-old martial arts legend Bruce Lee poisoned by jealous "Chinese martial arts lords" for revealing trade secrets in his popular films such as Enter the Dragon? Tragically, Lee's son, Brandon, was "accidentally" shot and killed by a gun that was supposed to be filled with blanks during the filming of The Crow in 1993.
  
• Aspiring film actress Elizabeth Short, the notorious "Black Dahlia," was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles in 1947, her body "savagely mutilated" and "hacked in half at the waist." No one has ever been arrested in connection with the murder.
  
• "That guy up there's gotta stop; he'll see us." - last words, James Dean, September 30, 1955

Grr... sorry it's so messy, but it'll take too long to clean up and make them dot points...


Hey Grant... I did it for you!!! ~ Kris

Interesting tidbit in the Black Dahlia case (Elizabeth Short)

5/11/03

Retired detective says father is killer in L.A.'s oldest cold case
LINDA DEUTSCH
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES ---- He carries it in his pocket as a talisman, a tiny 3-inch book of grainy photos that he touches now and then as if reminding himself that the horror is real.

Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD homicide detective, is adjusting to the discovery of evidence, including this little book, that he said proves his late father, a respected Los Angeles doctor, was the torture killer of Elizabeth Short, the so-called Black Dahlia. Hodel also believes his father might have killed several other women, as well.

If he is correct, Hodel has cracked a more than half-century-old murder case that is the oldest and most notorious of Los Angeles' unsolved "cold cases." It also is one of the most sensational, a mystery replete with a beautiful victim, a grotesque murder, an incest trial and famous characters from the heyday of old Hollywood.

Hodel, 61, has written this gruesome tale in a book, "Black Dahlia Avenger."

"This is Hannibal Lecter meets 'L.A. Confidential' in 'Chinatown,' " said Hodel, who now lives in Lake Arrowhead. "You couldn't make up a story like this.

"Even before this, people would say to me, 'Your family is so interesting you should write a book,'" Hodel said in an interview. "But the fact that I would grow up to be a policeman and then discover this, well ..." His voice trails off in sadness.

In his book, Hodel paints his father, Dr. George Hodel, as a fiend who tortured and carved up a young woman and perhaps went on to kill others before he abandoned his family and fled the United States.

"I loved my father and respected him," Hodel said. "His blood flows through my body. He gave me being. But now I have come to look at my father as the true Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde."

Steve Hodel's journey into the darkness of his father's life began with the little brown photo album given to him by his father's widow when the elder Hodel died in 1999 at the age of 91. Its yellowing pages contained snapshots of some of George Hodel's 11 children from four marriages, including Steve and his mother, the ex-wife of director John Huston.

But what caught his eye were two carefully posed and framed photographs of a mystery woman with flowers in her hair.

"It wasn't immediate recognition," the author recalls. "But I thought, 'Why do I know this face?'"

He remembered a movie about the Black Dahlia case and began to do computer research, comparing the photos in the album with those of Elizabeth Short.

"Initially, I was sure there was some other explanation," Hodel said. "Dad knew a lot of beautiful women. I was in denial."

But as his research continued, his conclusion became inescapable.

Dr. George Hodel was a man with a genius I.Q. who socialized with Hollywood legends such as Huston and artist-photographer Man Ray, among other luminaries. He is shown in his son's book as the central figure in a depraved social set that dabbled in sex orgies and drugs. Ultimately, his father's path led to murder, Hodel said.

The 1947 Black Dahlia killing is a Los Angeles legend, a murder so gruesome it makes other famous killings pale by comparison. The body was severed at the waist, drained of blood and washed, then carefully posed in a vacant lot. Hodel said the pose was right out of a sculpture by Dr. Hodel's famous friend, Man Ray.

Contributing to the crime's enduring fascination were the beauty of the 22-year-old victim, who wore dahlias in her black hair, and the stories circulated at the time of her Hollywood ambitions.

"It's become synonymous with unsolved murders of beautiful women," said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. "It captured the imagination of the nation and still does. It was straight out of a B movie."

Mystery writer Robert Crais, the author of, "L.A. Requiem" and other books set in Los Angeles, said it was no ordinary crime.

"Certain things are part of the fabric of Los Angeles," he said, "and the Black Dahlia is one of them."

Elizabeth Short had come from Massachusetts in the 1940s in search of a better life. She dated many men and lost her true love in a wartime plane crash. Records show that several witnesses identified Short as a girlfriend of Dr. George Hodel.

When District Attorney Steve Cooley decided recently to release the long-secret files on the case, Steve Hodel's theory gained substance. His father's photograph was in the file, along with transcripts of electronic surveillance on his home for three weeks in 1950.

The reports are fragile, typed on onionskin paper that is yellowed and crumbling. But they make clear that Dr. Hodel was one of the prime suspects in the investigation of Short's murder.

He had been tried and acquitted on a charge of committing incest on his 14-year-old daughter in a sensational 1949 trial during which the Black Dahlia was mentioned. Afterward, police electronically bugged his Hollywood mansion, a Lloyd Wright-designed Mayan-style edifice where the rich and famous partied.

The transcripts of overheard conversations include a statement in Hodel's voice saying: "Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead."

At another point, he is quoted as saying, "Maybe I did kill my secretary." And there is a tape in which a woman is heard screaming.

The younger Hodel now believes that his father killed the secretary to keep her from talking. He also links Hodel to the so-called "red lipstick murder" of Jeanne French, a woman found slain within weeks of Short's murder with an obscenity and the initials "B.D." scrawled on her nude body in red lipstick.

The author also said he recognizes his father's handwriting on taunting cards and letters sent to police after the Black Dahlia killing. He said his research indicates that his father and an alleged accomplice might also be linked to the murders of seven other women and suggests they were serial killers.

Why didn't the police prosecute Hodel's father? The book offers a rather complicated theory involving police corruption and Hodel's position as the doctor who worked with the public health department in treating venereal diseases in Los Angeles. His medical files might have included some famous names. Steve Hodel also suggests some authorities were bribed.

He also notes that as the investigation progressed, Dr. Hodel left the country, spending most of the rest of his life in the Philippines.

Hodel's theory that his father was a killer in the same league as famous murderers such as Jack the Ripper is not without its skeptics. Over the years, many people confessed to being the Black Dahlia killer, but no one was ever charged with the crime.

Books were written and movies made giving both real and fictional accounts of the case. Dozens of Web sites, including some featuring Black Dahlia trivia quizzes and games, have been devoted to every aspect of the killing.

Theories abound about who might have killed Elizabeth Short. One writer even tried to implicate director Orson Welles.

A supporter of Hodel's theory is Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, a former prosecutor in the Charles Manson case who worked with Steve Hodel for many years. He said Hodel's story is different because he arrives with unusual credentials. For 24 years, he was a Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective assigned to Hollywood.

"I think he's a straight arrow guy," Kay said. "He had a reputation for honesty and being a good investigator."

He notes that when the younger Hodel began his unusual project, he came to Kay and swore him to secrecy. The prosecutor, stepping outside his official duties, said he would privately examine Hodel's evidence and tell him if the case could have been prosecuted, even though today no one is left to punish.

At the time Hodel wrote the book, the DA's files were not open to him. He gleaned most of his information from newspapers, public documents and family archives.

Based on Hodel's evidence, Kay said he would have no reluctance to file a murder case against Dr. Hodel if he was alive. But Dr. Hodel is dead and so are the key witnesses and investigators.

"As a homicide detective, he was trained to step back and look at things objectively," he said. "And he used that training."

Hodel has broken with some family members over his book. His father's widow no longer speaks to him. But his half-sister, Tamar, the subject of the incest trial, is convinced he is right.

"I always thought my father had killed the Black Dahlia," she said in a telephone interview. "I said it back then."

Tamar Hodel, now 68 and living in Hawaii, said she was branded a liar in the trial and went into exile with her mother in Mexico after the scandal.

"Now everything is falling into a clear light," she said. "I didn't know how badly I'd been smeared. In 1949, people didn't talk about incest much. It was a very different time. I got the message when I was so young that I was bad and a liar.

"Even with all the horrible things they said about me, I was under my father's spell for quite awhile," she said. "But I'm so glad I told the truth. ... Now I understand his cruelty, and I see it had nothing to do with me."

Steve Hodel believes his search was worthwhile. He said he often imagined Elizabeth Short and the other women his father might have killed crying out for justice.

"I've investigated 300 murders, and I've never seen anything close to this," he said. "I feel that I was being guided to find these important truths. It's been a spiritual trip for me

Great read mystic! It must be terrible to know such horrible things about your father hmmm... oh well, their story sounds fairly plausable, especially since he worked most of it out without the police files...

I heard that Harrison Ford stapled that hat to his head for the Indiana Jones Movies.

Grant, I did the "bullets" for you on the first post!

owe, that's so nice thanks, looks great

I heard the stapled thing too Sherry something about it falling off when it shouldn't. But then Indy's hat ALWAYS falls off anyway

Very true Grant. I thought my nephew was kidding me when he told me about the staples. We were watching Temple of Doom the other night. He would joke with me, after all Auntie Sherry did her fair share of it when he was little.