Ward C. Fritz -- Hard Landing

With partner Betty Wetenkamp, Fritz (under his professional name "Paul Ward") was a well-known stage, ballroom, and nightclub dancer in Omaha, Nebraska.  In 1937, the pair danced in a benefit for a "free shoe fund" sponsored by the local newspaper, The World-Herald.  On May 15, 1938, the 22-year-old dancer left the home he shared with his parents in good spirits and took a taxicab to a nearby airfield, Dodge Park, in Council Bluffs, Iowa.  Fritz bought a ticket for an aerial sightseeing tour, making a point to tell the pilot that he preferred to be the only passenger in the two-seater, open cockpit plane.  The plane took off from the field and had reached its cruising speed of 100 miles per hour when, 2,000 feet up, the pilot noticed that Fritz had climbed out onto the lower wing of the biplane.  Before the pilot could shout, the dancer jumped, hurtled through the air, and smashed face-up into the ground below just ten yards from a man working in his vegetable garden.  The impact drove Fritz 18 inches into the ground, split his clothes up the back, knocked the heels of his shoes, and threw the watch he was wearing four feet away from the body.  A woman sitting in her home 75 feet away reported that the body's impact jarred her entire house.

Donald F. Taylor -- He Ain't Go No Body

[The following is offered in acknowledgment of the birthday of Rebecca Baumann, stalwart friend and "First Lady of LaffLand."]

The sixth husband of wannabe sex symbol Marie "The Body" McDonald, Taylor produced the 1963 sex farce Promises!  Promises! starring his wife and Jayne Mansfield, who appeared nude in the Tommy Noonan-directed film.  Despite a massive publicity campaign that touted McDonald's impressive physical dimensions, the bonde glamour girl never achieved star status.  On October 21, 1965, Taylor found his 42-year-old wife's lifeless body slumped at her dressing table in their ranch-style home in the Hidden Hills section of Hollywood.  An initial coroner's inconclusive finding of suicide or accidental death by "acute drug intoxication" was later ruled "accidental" based on a review of McDonald's past life and normal pattern of living.
  

On January 3, 1966, Taylor, 47, was found dead in the same house at 5337 Jed Smith Road by his 16-year-old stepdaughter and her boyfriend.  His fully-clothed body was discovered lying on the floor alongside his bed.  An empty bottle of Seconal was found on the nightstand.  Taylor left two handwritten suicide notes and a will instructing that his mother be fiven the remainder of his estate after the payment of bills.  In a note addressed to Robert N. Hirte, his business partner in the Marie McDonald, Inc., cosmetics firm, Taylor wrote:  "Please go on with the cosmetics business.  It was Marie's fervent desire to give women a product that would do them some good at a reasonable price."  The fact that the note was dated two days before the discovery of his body led police to believe that Taylor actually took his life on January 1, 1996.

Robert Love -- "I'm Brave, I'm Brave"

http://life.time.com/

Known as a set designer under his real name, Abraham Levine, Love, 34, was a bit player in several films including the 1938 Norman Foster vehicle I Cover Chinatown in which he played an unnamed cop.  According to his roommate, Daniel Harris, Love had been brooding for days over the suicide of actress Carole Landis, whom he had never met.  On the morning of July 8, 1948, Harris entered the kitchen of the home he shared with Love at 1737 North Whitley Avenue in Los Angeles to find his roommate standing with his head over an open gas jet.  When Harris turned off the gas, Love displayed a razor blade and, pointing to a minor cut on his neck, said:  "This was too painful--I couldn't do it that way."  Later that day, Harris took love to visit a doctor with an office on the third floor of the Guaranty Building in downtown Hollywood.  While waiting, Love suddenly jumped up (cutting his finger on a piece of overturned furniture) then ran up two flights of stairs to the fifth floor office of another doctor.  According to the receptionist there, the actor muttered, "I'm brave, I'm brave.  I can stand it," as he pushed through the crowded waiting room and dove through a half-opened window facing Ivar Street just off Hollywood Boulevard.

Jake Wells -- Two Strikes You're Out

Known as the "Father of Vaudeville" in Atlanta, Wells managed the Richmond Bluebirds of the Atlantic League to three pennants before purchasing his first theatre in Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1890s.  In his nearly 30 year career as the "Dean of Southern Vaudeville," the showman purchased several other theatres and opened a chain of summer amusement parks throughout North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia.  Five weeks before committing suicide on March 16, 1927, the 63-year-old promoter suffered a nervous breakdown precipitated by concern over his own ill health and that of his wife.  On the fatal day, Wells accompanied by Betty Schaeffner, manager of his Park Hill Inn, was driving near Hendersonville, North Carolina, when they stopped to pick wild flowers.  Schaeffner began picking flowers while Wells leaned against a pine tree.  Moments after uttering, "It'll all be over soon," the promoter drew a revolver from a pocket and shot himself under the chin.  The woman vainly tried to wrest the gun from Wells before he fired a second deadly bullet into his head.

Roy G. Daniels -- Mr. Clean Meets Death

Failing in his bid to control all the popular priced vaudeville and picture theatres in Arkansas, Daniels, president of the Arkansas Amusement Company of Hot Springs, lost his business to creditors in 1909.  In ill health and facing imminent financial ruin, he returned to Topeka, Kansas, where longtime residents remembered him as a wild young man who as a bartender in the 1890s beat a man to death with a beer mallet in a seedy dive.  Tried for the murder, Daniel was acquitted in a controversial verdict that had turned the town against him.

On October 4, 1909, the promoter (age unreported) took a room in the National Hotel and committed one of the most fastidious suicides on record.  After writing notes to his mother, the press, the undertaker, and the coroner, Daniels removed pillows and a sheet from the bed, spread them on the floor and laid down to wait for the strychnine he swallowed to take effect.  Fearful the poison would act too slowly, he shot himself once over the heart and in the side of the head with an old fashioned cap and ball revolver.  The notes revealed Daniels' unusual attention to detail and a concern over how he would be remembered.  In one he wrote:  "This medicine is too slow.  I have taken off the clothes I wish to be buried in, so as not to soil them."  Another addressed to the newspapers begged:  "Please be merciful...I have been unsuccessful...This and sickness caused me to do this and for God's sake be merciful, this, the last, time."  And to the coroner:  "No investigation is necessary.  I have done this myself owing to business failure, sickness and despondency."

George Augustus Kelly -- Dancing into the Dark

Palais de Danse - Hammersmith

Kelly, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, joined the U.S. Army at the outbreak of World War I, but transferred to the British Air Force where distinguished service in the sky over France gained him a captain's commission.  Described as possessing a "magnetic personality," the handsome 30-year-old ex-flyer was acting as the manager of the Palais de Danse in Hammersmith when he met the attractive divorcee and dancer Sophia Erica Taylor, 29, there in 1920.  Known as "Babs" to her friends, Taylor was a chorus girl at the Gaiety Theatre and Hippodrome and was notorious for making the rounds of London nightclubs to dance.  The pair became lovers and dance partners, appearing in private exhibition dances in London though working principally in the suburbs.  Their extravagant lifestyle coupled with Kelly's gambling and addictions to alcohol and drugs soon cooled the relationship.  A pattern of violence developed.  Taylor, looking for a new benefactor, flirted with men while Kelly, drunk and insanely jealous, beat her.  Weeks prior to the impending tragedy (during which time the ex-soldier would often disappear for days) the dancer confided to a friend:  "I am very unhappy and Kelly is so strange.  He has hit me many times, and threatened me.  I do not know what to do."  Taylor became intimate with Captain Allan Leslie, formerly in the Golden Highlanders, and the two arranged to live together in Brighton.

Shortly after receiving a notice cancelling his appointment as manager for a circuit of suburban movie houses, Kelly entered Taylor's London flat at 8 St. James Street, Piccadilly, W., on December 17, 1920.  In the presence of her maid, he attempted to strangle his former lover to death on her bed.  The maid broke his grip, but Kelly fired a fatal shot into the fleeing Taylor before shooting himself in the head.  Among items found on Kelly's body were a quantity of cocaine and notes to Babs in which he wrote:  "Wish we could have fallen in love with each other as we have gotten along splendidly."

Harry Rush Raver -- Killed by a Gentleman

A leading film distributor in the teens, Raver was among the first to hold press previews for films.  In 1914, he previewed the Italian film Cabiria in the Gold Room of New York City's Astor Hotel.  Crippled by arthritis, Raver retired from show business and operated an antiques store before going blind.  On September 5, 1941, a burglar broke into the 62-year-old man's home at 1366 N. St. Andrews Place in Los Angeles.  Ignoring Raver's pleas not to hurt him because he was blind, the robber took $39 and beat him severely.  "If I verify the fact you are blind," Raver quoted the bandit, "I'll send your money back."  Raver died of his injuries on September 14, 1941.  A nightclub entertainer appearing before a Coroner's jury stated that for the last year or so Raver wrote the scripts for Busy Blind, a radio program featuring sightless talent.

Harold Blake Van Alstyne -- The Unbalanced Acrobat

A member of the hand balancing team of Van and Emerson, the 24-year-old acrobat became infatuated with Marian MacLaren of the vaudeville musical troupe the Five MacLarens while touring on the same circuit with them in 1922.  MacLaren, 30, accepted Van Alstyne's marriage proposal, but later broke off the engagement and returned his ring.  In September 1922, the acrobat turned up on the doorstep of the MacLaren home in Philadelphia demanding to speak to his former fiancee.  MacLaren's father intercede informing Van Alstyne that not only would the marriage break up the family act, but their age difference was also too great.  When finally allowed to see Marian MacLaren she refused to explain her reasons for cancelling the marriage although it was later reported she planned to marry another.  On the night of January 12, 1923, Van Alstyne attempted to talk to MacLaren backstage at New York City's Grand Theatre where the family was performing.  She again refused.  The acrobat waited until after the last show and followed the four MacLarens (three sisters and a brother) to the Autodine Cafeteria on 8th Avenue.  Van Alstyne walked up to their table, produced a pistol, and fired five shots instantly killing Marian and wounding her brother.  He shot himself in the chest, but survived.  The performer pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment on April 13, 1923.  Three days later, Van Alstyne hanged himself with a belt from his bunk in the Tombs.

Mildred O'Keefe -- Black Bottomed Out

A Ziegfeld Follies dancer, the St. Paul, Minnesota, native performed on the New York stage in Rio Rita (1927) and with the Marx Brothers in Animal Crackers (1928).  O'Keefe toured in Monte Carlo and Paris where she was credited with being among the first dancers to introduce the Black Bottom dance to the continent.  O'Keefe was working as saleswoman in the gown department of New York City's Saks Fifth Avenue when she suffered a nervous breakdown in 1936.  The 32-year-old former dancer returned to Minnesota and was visiting relatives in Minneapolis when she checked into the West Hotel as "M. Brown" on October 8, 1936.  Two days later, O'Keefe's body was found in her room next to a pound can of potassium cyanide from which a teaspoon had been taken and dissolved into a nearby glass of water.  An unsigned note expressed regret and said, "You will be better off without me."

Jack Thompson -- The East River "Floater"

Hobbled by a career-ending injury to a tendon in his right leg, the popular 32-year-old musical comedy and vaudeville dancer in shows like Peggy Ann and A Connecticut Yankee announced his decision to kill himself at a party in his Manhattan Towers apartment on the night of November 3, 1931.  No one took the threat seriously and Thompson was permitted to leave the apartment.  The dancer remained missing until December 5, 1931 when a badly decomposed body was fished out of the East River.  A former roommate recognized the expensive imported shoes on the corpse's feet as those of the dancer.  Ironically, the "floater" was not positively identified until the surgeon who performed the unsuccessful surgery on Thompson's tendon confirmed the position of the scar on the body's right leg.

Frank Messenger -- A Not so Merry Xmas

Messenger served as an assistant director on the 1920 Universal film The Virgin of Stamboul before moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the early thirties.  While continuing to assistant direct at MGM (Eskimo, 1934), Messenger became widely known as a production (or unit) manager for his work on Maytime (1937), Rosalie (1937), and his final film, Northwest Passage, released in 1940 after his death.  On December 19, 1939, the 48-year-old production manager was helping his wife, Dorothy, decorate the Christmas tree in their home at 6617 Maryland Drive in Hollywood when he suddenly left the room, went to the garage, and fatally shot himself in the head with a pistol.  Messenger, according to authorities, had been unemployed for several months.

Lester Renaudin -- The Downhearted Emcee

Renaudin, a 21-year-old emcee at the Club Plantation in New Orleans, was married to his childhood sweetheart, Mary Lee Roberts, a 19-year-old dancer at the Club Avalon in Metairie Ridge, Louisiana, for two years when their recent estrangement exploded into a murder-suicide on January 26, 1933.  Shortly before midnight, Renaudin waited in his car outside the Club Avalon for Roberts to report to work.  When she arrived, he invited her into the car to talk.  Minutes later, Renaudin pulled out a revolver, shot her through the heart, then fired a bullet into his brain.  Roberts continued to scream, "Please don't let me die," until expiring (with her husband) en route to the hospital.  A letter addressed to his father found on the dead emcee read:  "I can't possibly live without Mary Lee and can do anything living with her.  She is the only girl that could ever enter my life.  I suppose I am crazy -- I must be to do a thing like this.  I would have gone crazy before the day was over.  I never was happy in my life, so don't worry, my poor, good, sweet family.  I loved you more than I could ever express.  I would write more, but you know how I feel.  Your downhearted son, Lester."

T. D. Crittenden -- In the Line of Duty

Born in Oakland, California, on September 27, 1878, the character actor appeared in several silent films (Jewel, 1915; Love Never Dies, 1916; Polly Put the Kettle On, 1917; The Devil's Wheel, 1918; The Hottentot, 1922; The Fast Worker, 1924) under the names "T.D." and "Dwight" Crittenden (Crittendon).  Long retired from acting, the 60 year old was a deputy city marshal in Los Angeles when he was killed in the line of duty in that city on February 17, 1938.  Crittenden and his partner, Leon W. Romer, 60, were serving a $67.50 eviction notice on George Farley, a 57-year-old black laborer, when the man fired a large caliber rifle through the door of the small frame house at 1741 East 23rd Street.  The bullet struck Romer full in the chest killing him instantly.  A retreating Crittenden was able to gain the street before he was dropped by a bullet in the head.  Summoned by neighbors, police surrounded the house and for an hour pumped volleys of bullets and tear gas into the structure.  Detectives cautiously entered the home to find Farley slumped on his face in a rear room severely wounded five times in the thighs, arms, and chest.  The laborer survived, and was convicted on two counts of manslaughter in June 1938.  Farley, unsuccessful in his insanity defense, was ordered to serve to consecutive 5 to 10 year terms in San Quentin.

Kitty Melrose -- Soon Forgotten

Adelphi Theatre

Kitty Melrose (real name Agnes Butterfield) last appeared onstage in The Quaker Girl during the early teens at the Adelphi Theatre in London.  On June 13, 1912, the actress (age unknown) was found dead lying on her back with her head in a gas oven in her flat in St. Stephen's mansions, Smith-square, Westminster.  Three months earlier, she had attempted to take her life with an overdose of veronal.  Brought to self-destruction by her former lover's refusal to go against his family and marry her, Melrose left the man two letters.  In one she wrote:  "Eddie, my dear one, I cannot bear any more, and everyone has told me you won't, and have done with me.  I am heartbroken, and cannot bear any more. Please forgive me, but I know as you do not love me, you will soon forget me.  All my love, and good luck to you.  Your Kit."  And in a postscript:  "It was wrong for every one to keep you from me.  It has made it too impossible.  I cannot fight alone, but I did believe in you, and did not think you would fail me.  But God's will.  I know you thought you were doing right. -- K."  In the other:  "Eddie -- By leaving me alone you thought you were doing right, but it was all wrong and cruel.  God forgive you, as I hope he will forgive me. -- Kit."