Dorothy Smoller -- Chain of Torture

Smoller, a one-time dancer in the company of Anna Pavlova, acted on Broadway in Checkerboard and What's in a Name in 1922 until a severe case of pulmonary tuberculosis exiled her to the Cragmore Sanitarium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1923.  There she met fellow patient Benjamin Strong, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, who (with others) helped subsidize the cost of Smoller's protracted stay at the facility.  In 1925, Smoller left the sanitarium to live with her parents in California, but a chance to act in the Broadway play Howdy, King lured her back to New York in November 1926.  Advised by her doctor that a return to stage work posed a significant health risk, the 25-year-old actress flatly stated that she would rather die than not make the attempt to fulfill her ambition.

One week before the opening of the play, Smoller suffered a hemorrhage that effectively ended her acting career.  On December 9, 1926, she drank a three ounce bottle of shoe polish containing cyanide of potassium as a base in her room on the 28th floor of the Hotel Shelton in New York City.  She died fifteen minutes after the arrival of the hotel physician.  Smoller left three notes.  One was to Strong thanking him for his kindness and another was to a friend instructing him how to dispose of her property.  In the note to her mother, the actress referred to her illness as a "chain of torture" that "pains all the time."

Mina Rudolph -- Just One Person to Look at Me

Photo:  J. Willis Sayre

her twenties, Rudolph had been a noted beauty and a musical comedy star of shows like The Red Feather at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles and a former singer of the San Toi Opera troupe of San Francisco.  Now a 55-year-old former opera star beset by financial worries, Rudolph was rescued by police in the fall of 1936 after attempting to gas herself to death in the bathroom of her home at 508 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills.  Weeks later on November 27, 1936, Rudolph registered at the exclusive Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills and requested "a room high up, where I can really rest."  Moments after being escorted to her room on the seventh floor, Rudolph wrote a note, removed her hat and glasses, then jumped from a window fatally landing on a skylight over the ground floor.

The note, addressed to her former husband, Jefferson James Grove, read:  "Dear Jeff:  I have left a will giving everything to you, also the contents of my safety deposit box, which is under the name of Mrs. J. George Faber, Box No. 970.  There is plenty of money to pay all expenses.  Keep what you want here, and as to the rest, telephone the Goodwill .  Well, I don't feel like retiring -- much.  Lovingly, Mina."  In a postscript she added:  "I don't want a minister, music nor praying at my funeral.  Just one person to look at me.  If I can't be put with Maude in 'Frisco, just scatter mine also.  I'll be so glad when it's all over with."

Douglas McPhail -- The Cost of McFailure

Jaynes and McPhail in happier times

Described by Metropolitan Opera star Lawrence Tibbett as "one of the best young baritones I have heard," McPhail appeared with nightclub bands in South America before extra work in motion pictures led to romantic singing parts in features.  Paired with Betty Jaynes in such films as Sweethearts (1938) and Babes in Arms (19139), McPhail secretly married the actress in 1938.  When they divorced in 1941, Jaynes was awarded sole custody of their daughter.  Shortly afterward, a distraught McPhail drank poison, but phoned his mother in time to be saved.  The singer volunteered for the Army in 1943, but a fall incurred during basic training kept him bedridden for eight months.  Medically discharged with the rank of private, the 30 year old worked four hours a day as a gardener while pursuing his musical studies in the hope of appearing in a concert.  Suffering from acute nervous exhaustion, McPhail swallowed poison in his home at 1818 N. Vine in Hollywood on December 7, 1944.  He died shortly afterward in General Hospital.

Lucy Cotton -- The Unhappy Princess

Cotton (born in 1891 in Houston, Texas) began working on Broadway in the mid-teens as a chorus girl in The Quaker Girl before graduating to larger roles in Turn to the Right (1916), Lightnin' (1918), and Up in Mabel's Room (1919).  In films, Cotton had bit parts in Divorced (1915) and Life Without Soul (a 1915 version of Frankenstein) before receiving co-star billing in The Prodigal Wife (1918), The Sin That was His (1920), and the 1921 George Arliss vehicle, The Devil.

Cotton's personal life, however, was her greatest role.  Married five times, her first in 1924 to Edward Russell Thomas, publisher of The New York Morning Telegraph, left her a multi-millionaire when he died two years later.  In 1927, she married Colonel Lytton Ament.  They divorced in 1930, and a year later she married Wall Street broker Charles Hann.  The union ended in divorce in 1932, and the next year she married William M. Magraw, a former newspaperman.  When this marriage ended on May 4, 1933, she married Prince Vladimir Eristavi-Tchitcherine at Key West, Florida, on the same day.  She divorced the exiled Russian prince in 1941 charging "extreme cruelty."  The divorce decree gave her the right to retain the title of princess.

At 9:00 A.M. on December 12, 1948, the 57-year-old owner of the beachfront Macfadden-Deauville Hotel was found in a coma by the butler in her palatial home at 943 Venetian Way in Miami Beach, Florida.  A note asking that a Miami doctor be called and an empty bottle of sleeping pills were found on a bedside table in her room.  Princess Lucy Cotton Thomas Ament Hann Magraw Eristavi-Tchitcherine died hours later without regaining consciousness at St. Francis Hospital.

Lynn Reynolds -- Next Stop...Deadwood

Reynolds, a director-scenarist best known for Westerns like The Deadwood Coach (1924), The Buckaroo Kid (1926), and Hey!  Hey!  Cowboy (1927), had originally planned to spend only three days in the High Sierras shooting scenes for Universal's Back to God's Country starring the sexy Renee Adoree on loan-out from MGM at $3,500 a week.  Instead, the company was snowed in for three weeks at Bishop, California, before Reynolds could complete the pivotal shots.  Afterward, the 36-year-old director phoned his wife in Hollywood to let her know that he would not only be coming home on the evening of February 24, 1927, but would also like to have a dinner party with friends to mark the occasion.

Arriving at his home at 8281 Fountain Avenue, a tired and emotionally spent Reynolds was displeased to find only one couple, Mr. and Mrs. William H. White, had been invited by his wife, formerly known on screen as "Kathleen O'Connor."  At dinner, the woman playfully "accused" Reynolds of having shared a lunch basket, which she had prepared for him, with Renee Adoree while on location.  Shouting, "It's a lie!" Reynolds countered by accusing her of adultery.  Enraged, the woman tossed an ashtray at her husband, prompting him to storm off to the sunroom at the rear of the house with his wife in hot pursuit.  Mr. White followed the pair into the room and saw the woman, her eyes puffy from being used as a punching bag and pleading for her life, on the floor with Reynolds above her brandishing a .38-caliber pistol.  The director then placed the pistol to his head and fired.  He died the next day at Receiving Hospital.  Back to God's Country was finished by director Irvin Willat and released on September 4, 1927.

Emilia Da Prato -- Never Date a Dry Cleaner

Da Prato in 1927.   (Photo:  J. Willis Sayre)

"I have killed my sweetheart," Umberto Giusti, 37, told San Francisco police moments after he surrendered to them following the fatal shooting of Emilia Da Prato, his 26-year-old girlfriend, on December 19, 1933.  Da Prato, a promising opera singer, was one of two winners in the Western district of the Atwater Kent national radio audition contest in 1927.  She later placed second in the New York City portion of the contest.  According to Giusti, an employee of a dry cleaning establishment, he fell in love with Da Prato two years earlier and acted as her booking and press agent.  Giusti bankrolled her career and was buying his lover a car when he learned Da Prato was seeing another man, and planned to leave the Bay area for an audition with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City.  On the day of the killing, Giusti called at the Da Prato family home in South San Francisco and angrily confronted the woman, shooting her three times in the back.  He turned the gun on himself, but the weapon jammed and he wandered away in a daze.  Shortly afterwards, Giusti gave himself up at a local police station.  Neighbors and relatives of the dead woman shouting "Lynch him" attempted attempted to mob the self-confessed killer at the South San Francisco jail prompting authorities to hastily transport Giusti to the county jail at nearby Redwood City.  At trial in February 1934, the jealous dry cleaner turned opera impresario pleaded "not guilty by reason of insanity," but a jury needed less than two hours to convict him of first-degree murder with a recommendation of leniency that carried an automatic life sentence.

Benjamin Krause -- The Greatest Show on Earth

Widely known in the South as the owner-operator of Krause Greater Shows, the 57-year-old veteran showman's business had all but been wiped out by a freak storm that struck the fair in the winter of 1936.  On January 6, 1937, a depressed and suicidal Krause, accompanied by a concerned brother, was en route by train to a sanitarium in Philadelphia when he eluded his traveling companion at the Union Station in Savannah, Georgia.  Earlier on the trip, Krause had twice tried to take his life, first by jumping off the train into a river and then later my breaking his glasses and attempting to slash his wrists.  Ten hours after his brother reported him missing, Krause's body was found by blacks searching for driftwood on the north bank of the Savannah River.  Burns on the showman's lips suggested that he had ingested a corrosive dose before jumping off the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad train into the river.

Bantcho Bantchevsky -- The Fat Lady Sings

A well-known musical comedy performer in the thirties on "Bulgaria's Broadway," a theatrical section of Sofia, Bantchevsky left Bulgaria after it became a Soviet ally during World War II.  He continued to perform as an actor and singer throughout post-war Europe before emigrating to the U.S. in the early 1950s with the dream of starring in American theatre.  In New York, he supported himself as a singing coach, and by writing political satire for Radio Free Europe.  A devoted opera enthusiast, Bantchevsky, 82, was a fixture at Metropolitan Opera House performances, and had cultivated friendships with many of its Bulgarian stars.

On the morning of January 23, 1988, Bantchevsky refused a friend's dinner invitation with the comment that he could not eat because "I'm going to die tonight."  Attending the Met's matinee performance of Verdi's opera Macbeth, Bantchevsky seated himself in the "Family Circle," the fifth and highest balcony in the opera house where desks are provided for patrons to study the score during the performance.  During the first intermission two ushers had to pull Bantchevsky away from the top railing where he was seated rocking slowly back and forth.  Ten minutes into the second intermission, the singing coach plunged 80 feet from the top railing, bounced off a lower balcony rail, and mercifully landed on unoccupied seats ten rows from the back of the orchestra with a broken seat atop him.  The rest of the opera, broadcast live on nationwide radio over the Texaco Metropolitan Opera Network, was cancelled.  Friends of Bantchevsky said that the elderly man had recently suffered from poor health, and had constantly talked of suicide.

Lulu Leslie -- Leave Nothing to Chance

Fearful that she would die among strangers and receive a pauper's burial in potter's field, the 75-year-old woman known to fellow boarding house tenants as "Mrs. Eva Smith" was in daily contact with a Staten Island undertaker.  Once assured by the firm that she would be buried with her family in Philadelphia, the single woman gassed herself to death in her two-room basement apartment at 139 W. 101st Street in New York City on September 27, 1929.  "Mrs. Smith" was found lying on the floor of her kitchen near a gas jet with one of its three jets wide open.  A canvas bag strapped around her waist contained $720 in new bills.  A letter from the Staten Island funeral home confirming her burial plans was found atop one of several trunks filled with tattered costumes, press clippings, and handbills identifying the gas victim as former burlesque and vaudeville queen Lulu Leslie, who 50 years earlier had danced in the musical extravaganzas The Black Crook and King Cole the Second, and with Billy Watson's Beef Trust.

Henry M. Spitzer -- Cruising Down the River Styx

Spitzer, 54, president of a New York City-based music publishing business bearing his name, was formerly an executive with the Edward Morris Music Company and the Chappell Music Publishing Company as well as a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).  Gone, however, were the days that spawned his one big song hit, "Cruising Down the River" (1945), and by September 22, 1952, the veteran Tin Pan Alleyite was tired, sick, and financially ruined.  That day, Spitzer committed suicide by inhaling illuminating gas in his Manhattan apartment at 333 Westr Fifty-seventh Street.  The music publisher left four notes in which he attributed his self-destruction to illness and financial reverses.

Harry Leonard -- Tragedy in Laughter's Wake

For three years 55-year-old film character actor Harry Leonard (reported in the news as being in Ramona, 1916) longed to marry Anneska Frolik, 24.  Shortly after dusk on August 31, 1917, Frolik's 24th birthday, Leonard arrived at her home at 1115 South El Molino Street in Los Angeles carrying two packages.  While waiting for the young woman to return, Leonard spoke amiably with her sister-in-law and mother.  Opening one of the packages to reveal a pile of unpublished screenplays tied with a red ribbon, Leonard declared that they would be valuable properties after the war.  The women's patronizing smiles elicited a strange comment from the aging actor, "Ah, you laugh.  Tragedy follows in the wake of laughter."  Leonard fell into a dejected silence for the rest of the evening until Frolik returned at 9:00 P.M.  The women left them alone to talk.  Whispers in the parlor were interrupted by three pistol shots in quick succession.  Rushing into the room, Frolik's family saw her (bleeding profusely from two shots to the chest and one in the stomach) grappling with the actor.  Leonard produced a pint bottle of steaming sulfuric acid from his coat, tossed it in Frolik's eyes, and in the general direction of the horrified pair, before taking another bottle filled with carbolic acid from his pocket and drinking it.  The actor staggered out of the house brandishing the automatic weapon.

Leonard was quickly found  and returned to Frolik's home.  Shortly before passing out from the pain, the actor indicated two type-written letters addressed to the girl's father lying near the manuscripts.  Both Anneska Frolik and her aged suitor later died.  One of the letters, addressed "Not to be opened under any circumstances while I am in existence," willed the packaged screenplays to Frolik's father.  The other, also written to the man, intimated that while the young woman once promised to marry him, she experienced a change of heart.  Leonard concluded, "I must show you I cannot live with her in this Hell and I will try my best to live with her in Heaven, if there is one.  I will take her with me through my act and I hope that you will forgive me.  I hope we all will meet over there."

Robert Sorrells -- Don't Fuck with the Cowboy

Sorrells in 1967 (aveleyman.com)

Born in 1930, Sorrells was a bit player in films, especially Westerns, from the early to the late 1960s.  His films include All Fall Down (1962), Morituri (1965), Gunfight in Abilene (1967), The Last Challenge (1967), The Ride to Hangman's Tree (1967), Death of a Gunfighter (1969), Bound for Glory (1976, as Woodie Guthrie's father), Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978), Fletch (1985), and Nowhere to Run (1989).  Sorrells also landed small parts in three made-for-television movies (San Francisco International, 1970, NBC; Female Artillery, 1973, ABC; Gus Brown and Midnight Brewster, 1985, NBC), and was seen on a variety of Western television series (Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Rawhide, Lancer, Cimarron Strip).

Sorrells in 2002

The 74-year-old actor was retired and living in a low income senior citizens complex in Simi Valley, California, when an argument in a bar on July 24, 2004, turned deadly.  The night before, Sorrells drank until closing at the Regency Lounge, a seedy downtown bar located on Los Angeles Avenue and Galt Street about twenty miles northwest of L.A.  The next morning, he revisited the tavern to inquire about a lost credit card, returning later in the afternoon to resume drinking.  Sorrells harassed a female bartender to the extent Arthur DeLong, a 45-year-old painting contractor who was drinking at the tavern, escorted the elderly man outside.  Sorrells drove his Volkswagen minibus back to his apartment in Heywood Gardens, retrieved a semiautomatic pistol, and returned to the Regency Lounge around 5:00 P.M.  What next transpired was captured on silent videotape from a surveillance camera mounted in the ceiling above the bar.  Sorrells, a silver-haired man with a Col. Sanders-type goatee, walked into the bar, held the gun to DeLong's back, fired, and shot another round at the man as he lay dead on the barroom floor.  The former Western actor then turned the gun on another patron seated at the bar, Edward Sanchez, 40, shooting him in the face and back.  Sanchez survived the attack.  Stunned patrons recalled prior to exiting the bar, Sorrells shouted, "Does anybody else want to fuck with the cowboy?"  Simi Valley police apprehended the retired actor in his van minutes later three blocks from the shootout, and booked him in the Ventura County Jail on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.  A detective later testified that five hours after the shooting Sorrells' blood-alcohol level was still more than twice the legal limit.

Interviewed by detectives, the former actor's friends painted a sad picture of a man in emotional decline.  Friendly and outgoing, Sorrells was a practicing vegetarian who kept a small shrine to an Eastern god in his apartment.  Proud of his former screen accomplishments, he often showed friends residual checks from the Screen Actors Guild.  The death of his mother and poodle in 2003, however, radically changed Sorrells' personality.  He cut himself off from others, and resumed drinking.  Paramedics once called to his apartment described Sorrells in their report as a "babbling drunk."  A friend who spent the last decade performing with Sorrells (a talented guitarist) in a weekly jam session reported how after the deaths the elderly man began acting "weird."  Sorrells started calling the man to complain of how he felt he ruined his life by "pickling his brain" with alcohol and drugs.  Later, he received a threatening phone call from Sorrells announcing their friendship was over.  "I don't like you," the actor said.  "I have a gun and will come after you."  The music group banned the aging actor, a self-professed celibate yogi with the email username "yogibob," after he propositioned one of its female members.  A woman in Heywood Gardens sadly commented, "He was my friend, but he was a wacko, no doubt about it.  My intuitive reaction is that he's nuts....  It's just so heartbreaking."

The damning videotape recorded by the surveillance camera in the Regency Lounge was played at a preliminary hearing in October 2004 to determine a trial date.  The prosecutor likened Sorrells to a "gunfighter" in one of his 1960s Westerns.  The trial date was set, Sorrells later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder in May 2005 after a psychiatric examination determined he was sane at the time of the shooting.  On July 13, 2005, Sorrells was sentenced to a prison term of 25 years to life.

Homer M. Walters -- He Lost It at the Movies

sbtos.com

Walters and Lillian Tyler, both 32, played together in the orchestra at the Loew's Park Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio.  During his 12-year courtship of Tyler, Walters spent $15,000 on the organist in an unsuccessful bid to marry her.  In early March 1925, the musician struck the woman when he caught her entertaining a young college boy in her apartment.  He was arrested for assault and battery, but released after Tyler refused to testify against him.  On March 25, 1925, the frightened woman phoned authorities to report Walters had repeatedly threatened to kill her.  At a joint meeting before the police prosecutor, Lillian Tyler intimated to her frustrated suitor that she "might" place him on probation and, if he behaved himself, possibly later marry him.  At 5:30 P.M. on March 28, 1925, Tyler was seated alone in the front row of the Loew's Park Theatre during a non-musical interlude of the comedy film, The Burglar.  Walters, who recently quit the orchestra to become the treasurer of his father's coal company, sat down beside her.  Although an estimated 200 patrons were in the theatre, no one was seated in the next ten rows behind the couple.  During an action scene in the film punctuated by some fifty sound effect shots, Walters produced a revolver and pumped four rounds into Tyler's cheek, temple, neck, and eye.  Afterwards, he shot himself in the head.  Unaware the pistol reports they heard were not part of the movie, the audience laughed and applauded as two people lay dead in the front row.  Their bodies, Tyler's slumped in her seat and Walters' splayed on the floor at her feet, were discovered by an usher ten minutes later.

Helene Jerome -- Three and Out

A graduate of the Royal Dramatic Academy in London, Jerome acted on stage in China, but never appeared in films.  On August 27, 1958, Jerome's ex-husband Edwin, became alarmed after the switchboard operator at the Hollywood apartment where the former actress lived informed him that her phone had been off the hook for several hours.  Edwin Jerome entered the apartment at 1738 N. Las Palmas Avenue and found Helene's naked body in the rear, a victim of strangulation.  Investigating officers found a screen torn away from a painted window which allowed the killer access to the apartment.  A few days later, Edgar G. McAdoo, a 25-year-old carhop from Texas, was arrested on suspicion of murder due to his resemblance to a police sketch based on descriptions of witnesses who saw with the 50-year-old onetime actress in a bar shortly before her death.  McAdoo admitted being with Jerome and to escorting her back to the apartment, but insisted he then left.  The case against McAdoo collapsed due to a lack of physical evidence and his passing of a lie detector test.

Only momentarily deterred, authorities arrested Miller F. Dowdy, 42, on September 6, 1958.  The operater of a newstand on Hollywood Boulevard only a block away from Jerome's apartment on N. Las Palmas, Dowdy admitted briefly dating the woman, but maintained he was at work on the day of the killing.  As with McAdoo, the case against Dowdy soon fell apart.  The Jerome murder remained a cold case until November 21, 1962, when Michael John Donahue, a 26-year-old shipping clerk from La Puente, California, walked into a Portland, Oregon police station and confessed to the strangulation.  Guilt-stricken over the murder, he fled to Oregon to "try and get away from it all."  Donahue pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in April 1963 to a prison term of 5 years to life.

William H. Lothrop -- The Last Round-Up

On May 2, 1913, moments before the curtain at the Boston Theatre was lifted on the first act of The Round-Up, the theatre's 38-year-old treasurer and assistant manager chatted amiably with a cast member.  Lothrop retired to his office on the second balcony floor and soon afterward a shot rang out.  He was found on a couch clutching a revolver in his left hand and bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the head.  Lothrop died at Boston's Relief Hospital a half hour later without recognizing his wife of a year at his bedside.  Shortly before shooting himself, Lothrop had phoned her and their conversation had sufficiently worried the woman to leave for the theatre.  While no reason was publicly stated for the suicide, Lothrop's brother added an element of mystery to the affair when he stated that the man suffered from a paralysis of the left side that made it impossible for him to have committed the deed with his left hand.

Pasqual Fabris -- The Martyrdom of the New Christ

Frances Langford -- "No" to Samoa

Repeated career disappointments and the refusal of film star and vocalist Frances Langford to marry him prompted the 25-year-old violinist to run a length of fire hose from the exhaust pipe of his car into the closed compartment.  On April 27, 1937, police in Los Angeles found Fabris slumped in the seat of his car, the engine still running, a victim of carbon monoxide poisoning.  A rambling 16 page note left in his apartment at 6326 Lexington Avenue listed a litany of professional and personal rebukes that had driven the mentally unbalanced musician over the edge.

Born in Dalmatia on October 28, 1901, Fabris had studied under the noted Viennese conductor Carl Flesch, made his concert debut in Berlin in 1924, and from 1927 to 1931 was first violinist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.  In the City of Angels, Fabris' life began to unravel.  In 1933, Fabris failed to win the post of conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra recently vacated by Artur Rodzinski.  Afterward, a major studio's refusal of his offer to direct a cycle of Wagner operas was quickly followed by his dismissal from Raymond Paige's Orchestra, a position obtained through Frances Langford.  The sexy screen actress, however, dealt the final blow to the violinist's teetering sanity when she nixxed his marriage proposal and subsequent scheme to retreat to Samoa where he planned to write a system of philosophy in which he heralded himself as a new Christ.

Mary Lygo -- Death by Any Other Name...

Chicago Daily News/Chicago History Museum

Lygo (born Irene Goodall in Akron, Ohio) joined the Ziegfeld Follies in 1918, and later worked for producers Simeon and Morris Gest in the New York stage production of The Wanderer.  Madly in love with Chicago millionaire Gordon C. Thorne, son of one of the founders of Montgomery Ward & Company,  Lygo wanted to marry the man, but was blocked by Thorne's mother who strongly disapproved of her.  After the breakup, Lygo twice tried to take her life.  In May 1921 she slashed her wrists with a razor at the home of her plastic surgeon, and in 1922 she lay in a coma for a week after ingesting poison.  One year later, Lygo filed a $100,000 breach of promise suit against Thorne, which was quietly settled out of court for $8,000.

In January 1927, Lygo traveled to the West Coast to play a nun in the Gest production of the Miracle Play.  Hoping to break into films, she took the name "Irene Fuller" to avoid any negative connotations associated with her true stage name.  On May 31, 1927, "Fuller" was found unconscious by her roommate on the floor of their room in the Vivian Apartments at 637 North Bronson Avenue.  A half-empty bottle of veronal tablets was found at the scene along with notes signed by "Fuller" in which she disposed of her possessions, requested that her mother not be told, and warned:  "Be most careful as to the name `M.L.' as it means so much to the press."  Lygo's identity was subsequently established by a fellow actor who visited the comatose woman at the Receiving Hospital.  Conjecture raged as to the reason for the act.  Some ascribed the deed to her broken love affair with Thorne while others noted that she was despondent about not quickly breaking into films.  The 25-year-old showgirl died in the Receiving Hospital on June 2, 1927.  A steamer trunk found after her death contained several tattered theatrical dresses and five pawn tickets.

Andrew Selkirk -- The Old Ball Game

A one-time cellist with various radio orchestras, Selkirk began a business arranging packaged radio programs until severe financial reverses left the 37 year old on the verge of bankruptcy.  Forced to send his wife to live with her mother, Selkirk was scheduled to vacate their Chicago apartment at 180 East Delaware on September 7, 1934.  That morning, he handed the bellboy two notes, one addressed to the manager of the building instructing him to break down the door of the apartment and to notify his wife, and the other to his wife explaining the deed.  Selkirk then fired a bullet into his brain.

To his wife, he wrote:  "Terese Dear:  These are the last and honest words of a soul in turmoil.  For what has happened to us I am entirely to blame.  Living, I am of no use to anybody, not even myself.  I want you to put all of this tangle out of your mind and begin anew.  Good luck, and I wish you a new and better deal."  In a message found at the scene dated August 7, Selkirk left a whimsical verse epitah addressed to a female friend of the family:  "Dear Honey:  Since we got into this argument, let's have a lot of fun, shall we?  What do you think of this paraphrase as an epitaph:

'Here lies the last work of Andy Selkirk;
For him life held no terrors;
He lived like a fool and died like a fool;
No runs, no hits, some error.
But no one left on bases.'

To get the full significance of the above you should listen to two full baseball broadcasts from beginning to end.  Yours in martyrdom, hi-de-hi, Andy."

Charles Dundas Slater -- One Way Death Cab

London Coliseum

Connected with the management of London's Empire Theatre from 1889 to 1895, Slater was also the business manager of the Alhambra before leaving in 1907 to manage the London Coliseum music hall.  Following years of faithful service, the 60 year old was dismissed on June 29, 1912 when rheumatic gout and failing eyesight prevented him from discharging his business duties.  At 4:30 P.M. on July 8, 1912, Slater flagged down a taxi cab and told the driver to take him to Charing Cross Hospital.  Minutes later, the cabbie heard what he believed was an exhaust backfire.  Arriving at the hospital, the cabbie discovered his fare lying on the back seat with a gaping wound in his head and blood flowing from his mouth.  A seven chamber revolver, with one spent round, was between his knees.  Slater died two hours later.

In a letter found on his body, Slater wrote:  "On the rocks.  No hope.  No daylight.  God forgive me for this act, but I am hopeless, and if there is one among my English and American friends who will have a friendly thought left for me let them now show it by doing all they can for my poor, faithful wife.  I have led a white man's life, but this is a degraded dog's finish,  I am broken-hearted, but not insane.--C.D.S."  On September 10, 1912, a distinguished company of artists gave a performance at the London Coliseum for the benefit of Slater's widow and children.

Clara Bloodgood -- How to Shoot Straight

Worn out by a long road tour of the South, and concerned about her physical and financial health, the 37-year-old actress shot herself in the mouth at the Hotel Stafford in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 5, 1907, as an expectant audience waited in the Academy of Music to see her perform in the Clyde Fitch comedy The Truth.  Bloodgood, gowned only in a loose wrapper, was found lying on her back across the bed with blood flowing from her mouth.  The actress had fired three shots.  The first missed and lodged in the ceiling while another was never found.  The death wound came from a round that passed through the roof of her mouth in front of the soft palate and into her brain.  A few days before the incident, Bloodgood purchased a pistol, a .32-caliber hammerless double-action Smith & Wesson, and had even queried a bellboy at the Stafford on its use.  A medical book containing marked sections outlining the parts of the brain was found in the room as was a tome titled How to Shoot Straight.  The contents of a sealed letter addressed to her stockbroker husband located on a nearby table later proved to have no bearing on the suicide.  Onstage for nearly ten years, Bloodgood previously starred on Broadway in two of Fitch's plays ( The Coronet of the Duchess, 1904; The Girl with the Green Eyes, 1904) before purchasing the rights to The Truth, and embarking on an exhausting 30 month road tour.

James Bradbury, Jr. -- A Terrible Way to Die

Mark of the Vampire (Bradbury third from left)

In films since 1921 (Bits of Life), Bradbury was a supporting actor throughout the twenties and thirties.  His credits include Classmates (1924), The Little Giants (1926), Hellship Bronson (1928), Alibi (1929), The Rogue Song (1930), The Cisco Kid (1931), Gorilla Ship (1932), Helldorado (1934), and Mark of the Vampire, director Tod Browning's 1935 remake of his silent classic London After Midnight (1927).  In Los Angeles on June 21, 1936, the 41-year-old actor turned on the gas in a room he had rented for the day at 1008 West Eleventh Street and struck a match.  Police found Bradbury in the hallway of the apartment house horribly burned about the face and body.  According to authorities, Bradbury told them that a friend he had given $258 for safekeeping had disappeared with the money.  "It's a terrible way to commit suicide," he whispered to nurses moments before dying later that day at Georgia Street Receiving Hospital.

Adolfo Utrera -- The Longest Siesta

cubanosfamosos.com

"`Just Sang My Last Song' sounds good for a song title...It is just a plain suicide.  I have needed a long rest.  And this is probably the longest one I'll get."  So read the note left by the 30-year-old Cuban pianist and singer-songwriter on December 3, 1931, shortly before he stuffed towels around the doors and windows of his Manhattan apartment at 176 West Eighty-sixth Street and then opened the gas jets on a kitchen range.  According to friends, although Utrera had a contract with the Columbia Phonograph Company to make Spanish language records, he was concerned over a recent lack of work and an impending operation.

Sidney Lazarus -- Love Meets the Reaper

Lazarus, 43, came to Hollywood in 1927 as a scenarist for the Warners' silent Patent Leather Kid after enjoying a successful career on Broadway as the author of such plays as Gabette, Come Along Mandy, and Dixie to Broadway.  On December 2, 1933, the screenwriter and his wife, Maud, decided to end their years of ill health by dying together in a well-planned and touching suicide pact executed in their Beverly Hills home at 522 Palm Drive.  The couple wrote and posted a letter to the manager of a Beverly Hills bank asking that he direct the police to come to their garage.  Later that afternoon they dropped off their dog at a friend's on the pretext that they were going away to a mountain resort for the weekend.  Two days passed before the bank manager received the letter and notified police.  Inside the garage, authorities found the car running and a rubber hose leading from the exhaust pipe up through the floorboard into the closed compartment.  In the back seat, the asphyxiated couple sat side by side -- he with his arm draped tenderly around his wife while her head nestled on his shoulder.

Peter Clark MacFarlane -- Dynamiting the Ruins

MacFarlane (born in St. Clair County, Missouri, in 1871) was a railroad man, acted on the San Francisco stage with the L. R. Stockwell repertory company, and served as the pastor of the First Church of the Disciples of Christ in Alameda from 1902 to 1908 before becoming a popular short story writer and novelist (Those Who Have Come Back, 1914; Tongues of Flame, 1924).  MacFarlane also wrote the screenplays from his own original stories for the films Guile of Women (1921) starring Will Rogers and A Pair of Hellions (1924).  On the morning of June 9, 1924, the 53-year-old writer applied for a gun permit in Pacific Grove, California, telling the chief of police there that he needed the weapon for "home defense."  Bidding his wife and children farewell, MacFarlane travelled to San Francisco.  That evening, he fired a bullet from a small caliber pistol into his temple on the steps of the San Francisco Morgue.  He died minutes later en route to the Harbor Emergency Hospital.  Long letters to his wife, children, the managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner and his doctor were found on the body.  The most telling, dated the day before his suicide, was addressed to his friend and physician, Dr. Rufus P. Rigdon.

It read (in part):  "The long battle with ill health is at an end and it is a lost battle.  It is just eleven years since you diagnosed diabetes in my case and told me that up to 40 it usually killed and beyond that it eventually dragged men out.  That is what it has done for me.  Insulin seemed to do its work wonderfully so far as my body was concerned, but the mental vitality would not come back; or rather the nervous energy on which it depends.  To a man of my calling, that makes me a physical bankrupt, without the power of sustaining concentrated thought or will force long enough to be effective for anything.  I tried to delude myself with the belief that the old power was still holding out, but it wasn't.  It has been slipping for a year; it refuses to return.  Nothing remains but to dynamite the ruins, as I shall have done before you receive this...I go -- realizing the grim humor that had I been run over by a Ford, my death would have been honorable, but that since I go of my own hand, it is an act of shame."

Eddie Brandstatter -- Restaurateur to the Stars

Los Angeles Public Library

The film capital's most famous restaurateur, the French-born Brandstatter open the famed Cafe Montmartre on Hollywood Boulevard near Highland Avenue in 1922.  One of Hollywood's first night spots, movie people flocked to the trendy upstairs restaurant to see and be seen.  Formerly employed in the famed restaurants of London, Paris, and New York before coming to Los Angeles, Brandstatter was the maitre d'hotel at the Victor Hugo around 1920 before opening Crillon Cafe near Eighth and Hill streets.  A bad business investment in the late twenties closed the Cafe Montmartre, and shortly afterward the caterer was convicted of grand theft and placed on probation.  Undaunted, Brandstatter and a partner opened yet another mecca for the film colony, Sardi's on Hollywood Boulevard near Vine Street.  Stars and the fans who queued to see them packed the place until it burned down on November 1, 1936.  Sardi's was rebuilt, but Brandstatter sold out his interest in April 1938.  He dreamed of building a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, the Bohemia Cafe, that would rival his past successes.  The cafe never opened, but construction bills continued to pile up.  Converting a former beauty shop on North Vine Street near Hollywood Boulevard into Brandstatter's Grill, he opened the modest restaurant shortly before the Christmas holidays in 1939.

On the night of January 17, 1940, Brandstatter complained of "not feeling well," kissed his wife, Helen, goodbye, and left the grill.  At 3:30 the following morning, a restaurant employee drove Mrs. Brandstatter to her Moorish-style home at 4709 Norwich Avenue in Sherman Oaks.  After a frantic search of the grounds failed to locate the missing 54-year-old restaurateur, they checked the garage and found him still clutching the steering wheel of his car.  Brandstatter had placed a garden hose on the exhaust, ran its length up through the tonneau, and plugged up the window nearest him with his leather jacket.  Authorities found numerous loan applications in the dead man' pockets.

Tamara Charle -- Only One Way

Photo:  J. Willis Sayre

Charle, 26, a vivacious French-Russian nightclub singer also known as "Tamara Zoya" and "Tamara Stephan," appeared in Albany, New York, in the musical shows The Cat and the Fiddle and Music in the Air.  On July 9, 1941, in that city, Charle shot her 4-year-old daughter (born after a separation from her husband) through the heart with a .22-caliber pistol in their room at the Ten Eyck Hotel.  The child's body was later found on the bed surrounded by pillows and dolls.  Foiled in the attempt to take her own life when the gun jammed, the despondent singer walked the streets of Albany for more than 12 hours before returning to the hotel, clearing the gun, then firing a bullet into her heart.  A note found at the scene read:  "To Whom it May Concern -- I wanted to go with the baby, but after the first bullet the gun jammed.  I then bought potassium ferricyanide.  That didn't work either.  There is only one way."  An autopsy revealed no trace of the poison.  In a separate letter to her estranged husband apparently referring to a telephone conversation, the singer wrote:  "I will not annoy you any longer after what happened last night."

Jean Le Brun -- Flyboy Blues

Historical Ziegfeld Group

Days after her married lover, pioneer aviator Leonard Bonney, died while piloting his experimental aircraft In Long Island, New York,, Le Brun, a 35-year-old contralto who appeared in 1921 as the prima donna in Lena Dailey's Burlesque Show and later as a singer in Florida cabarets, joined him in death.  On May 10, 1928, Le Brun's landlady smelled gas escaping from the singer's apartment on the second floor of a brownstone at 63 West Eighty-eighth Street in New York City.  Authorities entered to find an automatic pistol on top of a table in the living room surrounded by live shells and newspaper clippings concerning the dead flier.  Unable to disengage the gun's safety, Le Brun opted for gas.  Forcing open the locked bathroom door, police discovered Le Brun's body face down on the floor.  She had carefully stuffed every opening in the room with paper before opening two gas jets.  Four neatly written notes explained the deed.  To a brother she wrote:  "My suicide is unavoidable.  I cannot live any longer...My sweetheart was killed in an aviation accident Friday and I cannot possibly live without him.  Bonney's widow, denying that her husband ever knew Le Brun, asked, "Could you blame Rudolph Valentino, for instance, for all the silly women who killed themselves over him?"

John Markle -- The Demon's Seed

www.arkansasbusiness.com

On November 16, 1987, three days after being fired from a brokerage house for embezzling funds, the 45-year-old investment banker son of Academy Award winning actress Mercedes McCambridge went on a murder-suicide spree in his home in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Police found Markle's 45-year-old wife, Chris, in the third floor master bedroom, sprawled across a king-sized waterbed, shot three times.  In the childrens' second floor bedroom, Markle's 12-year-old daughter, Amy, shot four times in the head and chest, lay in bed next to her 9-year-old sister, Suzanne, who had been shot five times.  After killing his family, Markle descended to the first floor study, pointed a .38-caliber pistol to one temple and a .45-caliber gun to the other, and took his own life.  A rubber "Freddy Krueger" mask (believed to have been worn by Markle during some of the shootings) was found near the body.  A tape of Nightmare on Elm Street was in the VCR.  A two line handwritten note stating that he had killed his wife and children was on a desk in the study.

McCambridge, an Oscar winner for her supporting performance in the 1950 film All the King's Men, and well-known as the demonic voice of the possessed little girl in The Exorcist (1973), was visibly moved at the funeral service in Little Rock attended by then Arkansas' first lady Hillary Clinton.  Afterward, McCambridge quickly went on the legal offensive to block the publication of a bitter 13 page handwritten letter left to her by Markle.  In April 1989 the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled against the actress and made the damning document part of the public police file.  In the letter, dated October 1987, Markle exonerated McCambridge from any financial wrongdoing in his scheme to divert funds into her account, but indicted her as a mother.  It read (in part):  "I was essentially raised by live-in maids and relatives...I was conceptualized to save a bad marriage...I watched you try to kill yourself twice.  You have never been there for me when the chips were down.  When I cried on the phone you called me a "snivelling wimp"...Is this clear to you?  That you have hurt every member of my family.  That you have hurt me; that I stood by you under some really adverse conditions and that you have never done anything but manipulate me for your purposes...You were never around much when I needed you so now I and my whole family are dead -- so you can have the money.  Funny how things work out, isn't it?"  McCambridge, 87, died on March 2, 2004 of natural causes.

Lester Cuneo -- The Shootin' Fool

silentgents.com

Cuneo (born  in Chicago, Illinois on October 25, 1888) carved out a niche as an actor in independent Westerns beginning in 1921 with a starring role in the Capital Film Company five-reel silent The Ranger and the Law.  His other films include Blazing Arrows (1922), Silver Spurs (1922), Fighting Jim Grant (1923), Ridin' Fool (1924), Western Grit (1924), Range Vultures (1925), and Two Fisted Thompson (1925).

The Western star had been drinking heavily for several weeks when he returned to his Hollywood home at 1741 Crescent Drive to visit his estranged wife (actress Francelia Billington) and two young children. A few days earlier, Billington had filed for divorce, charging that her husband of five years had slapped her, and called her a "grafter and a thief."  After heatedly arguing with his wife on November 1, 1925, the 37-year-old actor picked up his children and kissed them goodbye, telling them, "Daddy's going away."  Cuneo then pulled a revolver from a closet, barricaded himself in the bedroom, and blew his brains out.

Elna Lassen -- Dancer with a Broken Heart

Lassen (born August 27, 1901, in Lyngby, Denmark) studied under dancer Valborg Borchsenius at the Royal Theater from 1909 to 1918.  The ballerina danced at the Royal Theater from 1918 to 1921 before relocating to the United States to study with Michel Fokine from 1921 to 1924.  Returning to Denmark, Lassen scored a triumph as "Swanilda" in Coppelia.  Her reputation as a strong technician was further assured by technically flawless performances as the "Ballerina" in Fokine's 1925 production of Petrouchka, and as the first Danish Firebird in 1928.  In 1930, stage producer-director Max Reinhardt was so impressed with Lassen during a visit to Denmark that he created a waltz for her in his production of Strauss' Die Fledermaus.  She performed the piece in Berlin on May 30, 1930, Reinhardt's 25th professional anniversary.  On September 19, 1930, the 26-year-old premier danseuse of the royal Danish ballet was discovered dead in the bed of her Copenhagen apartment from a self-inflicted pistol wound to the heart.  According to press reports, Lassen suffered from diabetes, but was also depressed over her rocky marriage to a medical doctor.  Lassen's body was found by the man after he reportedly returned from a night out spent in the company of a Danish countess.

Leona Hutton -- Iron Lung Exit

Hutton (real name Mary Epstein) was a leading lady in silent films and starred in The Typhoon (1914) with Sessue Hayakawa and The Market of Vain Desire (1916) with H. B.  Warner.  Prior to her Hollywood career, she toured in stock companies as "Jane Whitman."  Retired from acting, Hutton had resided in Toledo, Ohio for 13 years, and was the president of the local chapter of the Women's Overseas Service League when a leg fracture in 1949 confined the former actress to her home at 1741 Evansdale Avenue for ten weeks.  On March 31, 1949, Hutton informed her husband that she had taken an overdose of the painkilling drug codeine.  She died 13 hours later in an iron lung at Maumee Valley Hospital.  Hutton's death was ruled a suicide.  Her niece and protege, June Clyde, starred onstage and in British films (Dance Band, 1935; Poison Pen, 1939).

William J. Hilliar -- The Disappearing Bullet Trick

The London-born Hilliar, 60, began in show business as a magician working with such greats as Harry Houdini and Thurston.  In Chicago in 1902, he founded one of the first illustrated monthly magazines devoted to magic and magicians, The Sphinx, allied at the time with the Western Organ of the Society of American Magicians.  Hilliar also wrote several books on the subject including Magic Made Easy:  Money Catching and 50 Other Tricks (1902) and Modern Magicians' Hand Book:  An Up-To-Date Treatise on the Art of Conjuring (1902).  In addition to working on the staff of Billboard, the show business veteran also did publicity and press work for circuses and carnivals.  On November 15, 1936, a cab driver picked up Hilliar in downtown Cincinnati and drove him to the magician's home at 1228 Iliff Avenue in the suburb of Price Hill.  Telling the driver, "I'll be back in a minute," Hilliar went to the garage in the rear of the home and fired a bullet into his right temple.

John Henry -- The Laughter Dies

Gladys Horridge ("Blossom") and Henry.

Henry (real name Norman Clapham) had been one of the most popular radio comedians in England, but his career was in rapid decline when he committed suicide in his London home on Holland Road, W. on May 14, 1934.  The 52-year-old entertainer was found on the floor covered with an eiderdown comforter  nestled on three pillows, clutching a photo of his beloved who had recently died and his head inside a gas oven.  Letters found at the scene and earlier posted to friends by the dead man explained the act.  Separated from his real wife, Henry had been living with Gladys Horridge, a featured player known in his radio act as "Blossom" whom he had been passing off as his wife.  When Horridge died, weeks before he took his own life, Henry testifed that she was his wife in order to spare her any embarrassment.  When Henry's actual wife notified him that she was filing a lawsuit against him for support, he realized that he would not only be publicly embarrassed, but also face prosecution for giving false evidence at an inquest.

In the suicide note read at Henry's inquest, the comedian wrote:  "I am going to join my girl.  Please bury me with her and put her photo with me.  She was good to me and without her life is not worth living.  I am sorry to cause everyone trouble, but perhaps I have given a little happiness to others by the wireless.  It will require only a few minutes after I turn on the gas.  Hello everybody, John Henry.  I am going to my girl.  Goodbye everyone."  Henry's funeral was paid for by the Variety Artists' Benevolent Fund and attended by some 500 people.

Henry R. Thies, Jr. -- Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Thies (born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893) became known in Detroit, Michigan, as a "boy wonder" on the violin and rapidly rose to lead his own orchestra in one of the city's top hotels.  In 1926, the orchestra leader brought his stylish brand of symphonic jazz to Cincinnati where appearances at the Chatterbox Club led to a devoted following on local radio.  Well known on the Ohio hotel circuit, Thies also toured on vaudeville and performed in theatres.  In the early thirties, he left the road to become orchestra leader for Cincinnati radio station WLW.  Following a nervous breakdown in 1933, Thies survived an overdose of sleeping pills, but spent 15 months under observation in a sanitarium.  Thies was apparently in good spirits after arriving at his home in the Phelps Apartment at 506 East Fourth Street in the Queen City shortly after 6:00 P.M. on June 12, 1935.  While his wife, 19-year-old son, and a musician-friend waited dinner for him in the dining room, Thies went to the bathroom to change.  The 41-year-old orchestra leader stood in front of a long mirror, placed the muzzle of a .32-caliber pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

Adolph Tandler -- Classical Gas

Photo:  University of California

The Viennese-born Tandler moved to Los Angeles in 1908 and for several years played with a string quartet in the Alexandria Hotel.  In November 1913 he became the conductor of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, the forerunner of the Philharmonic, a position he held until the orchestra's dissolution in 1920.  Professionally, Tandler returned to Germany to serve as the conductor of the International Music Festival in Salzburg, became the conductor of the American Chamber Symphony in 1934, and played viola with the Philharmonic Orchestra before retiring in 1951.  On September 30, 1953, the bodies of Tandler, 78, and his 50-year-old daughter, Hedwig, crippled by arthritis since age 14, were found in a parked car on a hillside in the Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles where the pair had often driven to enjoy the view.  A hose led from the car's exhaust pipe into the closed interior of the auto.  The maestro left three notes, one of which lamented that he was unable to make his wife happy.

Kay Kent -- Marilyn Redux

As a teenager, the aspiring British model became obsessed with film star Marilyn Monroe, who overdosed on pills in her Brentwood, California, house on August 5, 1962.  Kent repeatedly bleached her naturally brown hair until it became the same shade as Monroe's.  Spare time was spent in her room practicing the dead star's pout and perfecting her makeup.  Finally, Kent spent $4,000 to have her breasts augmented to match Monroe's 38-inch bust.  As a Monroe look-alike, she became a well-known face in British tabloids and television knocking down $90,000 annually impersonating the sex goddess in media advertising.

In early 1989, Kent's mother died of cancer and soon afterward the model broke up with her childhood sweetheart, 28-year-old rock singer Dean Hammond.  On June 12, 1989, a tenant found the nude body of the 24-year-old Monroe impersonator dead on her bed in a row house in Chatham, England, some 34 miles southeast of London.  Like her idol, Kent was found with an empty pill bottle beside her.  Authorities reported that a half-empty vodka bottle and photos of Monroe were strewn across Kent's bed.  Movie stills of the actress, books about her, and Monroe recordings littered the room.  A note addressed to her former boyfriend read:  "Dear Dean, I love you so very much."  Kent's older brother told a reporter:  "She was so involved in her Marilyn image that she couldn't help herself from dying just like her idol.  I don't know why she killed herself.  She had hundreds of people around her.  Maybe she died of loneliness."

Anthony Paul Kelly -- One Face West

A film scenarist since 1915 (Body and Soul, The Builder of Bridges, The Great Divide), Kelly is best remembered as the author of the play Three Faces East, first presented on Broadway at  the Cohan & Harris Theatre on August 13, 1918.  The successful mystery melodrama was filmed as a silent in 1926, and as a talking feature by Warner Bros. Pictures in 1930.  Following the play's debut, Kelly enlisted in the Navy and served for the rest of World War I.  Afterward, he returned to writing screenplays that include Love's Redemption (1921), My Old Kentucky Home (1922), The Silent Command (1923), and The Scarlet West (1925).

In 1932, Kelly received treatment for tuberculosis at a hospital in Mount Vernon, New York.  Terminally ill, he left the facility and returned to his apartment at 410 W. 110th Street in New York City.  On the morning of September 26, 1932, Anna Delaforce, a longtime friend of Kelly's, received a letter from the scenarist informing her that he intended to end his life.  In it, he asked that she notify his brothers and other friends of his death.  Delaforce immediately contacted police, who forced entry into the 35-year-old writer's apartment.  Inside the gas fume-filled rooms, the lifeless Kelly lay on a couch, the floor around him littered with the manuscript of Three Faces East and notes written for friends and the landlord.  The writer left $27.00 to his landlord to cover any damage to the apartment.  In an explanatory note addressed to police, Kelly wrote (in part):  "This is a plain case of suicide.  Having contracted an absolutely hopeless case of T.B. in both my lungs and intestines and since I have contracted it in my throat, I can see no sense in prolonging this agony any longer.  I thought I could endure it a little longer but I can't...Give my belongings, such as they are, to the American Legion and kindly notify them that I requested that no religious services be held before my burial."