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Saturday, August 30, 2014

Dudley Ayres -- It was Done

Ayres (born in Iowa in 1890) acted in stock theatre and silent films (The Uphill Path, 1918), and was leading man at the Castle Square Theatre in Boston, the Majestic in Los Angeles, and for three years at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco.  In June 1930, he became the director of speaking broadcasting at radio station KYA in San Francisco.  Ayres, 40, specialized in delivering inspirational messages to the downtrodden, discouraged, and shut-in in daily 15 minute "chatalogues" in the morning and on Friday evenings in a segment of dramatic sketches titled "The Voice and the Harp."

On the morning of September 5, 1930, Ayres arrived at KYA to prepare his morning message prophetically titled "It Can Be Done."  After concluding his 15 minute show with a reading of Edgar A. Guest's inspirational poem "How do You Tackle Your Work," Ayres drove to the garage of his home at 655 Powell Street and shot himself in the head.  His Chinese houseboy, hearing the car's engine running and noticing exhaust fumes issuing from the closed garage, investigated and found his employer dead on the car's front seat.  Near the hand that still clasped a .38-caliber revolver was found a note to his third wife:  "Marjorie, my dear -- I'm afraid I's losing my mind -- and haven't the courage to go on.  And I don't want to spoil your life, so am taking the coward's way out.  Dudley."  Scores of persons who had been touched by Ayres' daily inspirational messages filed past his bier in a Market Street funeral chapel before the body was sent to Los Angeles for burial.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Florence Fay -- "Hurry Here"

On July 11, 1928, the domestic discord brewing between the 35-year-old former show girl (real name Vollbracht), her estranged husband, Robert Vollbracht, and her so-called lover, Frank McCoy, ended in tragedy in New York City.  Weeks earlier, Fay's husband had instituted a divorce action after finding her in a room with McCoy.  Although Fay insisted that their relationship was purely "companionate," Vollbracht moved out of their apartment at the Century Hotel at 111 W. Forty-sixth Street.  On July 11, Florence Fay phoned a close friend to inform him that "I am going to end my life.  Hurry here.  When you arrive I will be dead."  A hurried call to the hotel manager proved too late.  Upon entering the ex-showgirl's room decorated with autographed photos of movie stars, he found Fay dead on the bathroom floor near an empty three ounce vial of Lysol.  According to authorities, a newspaper clipping announcing a suit filed by her husband was found among her effects.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Winifred Greene -- Let's Not Meet Again

The 21-year-old soubrette of the Ginger Girls Company had just completed singing an encore of "The Skeleton Rag" at Kansas City's Gayety Theater on February 24, 1912, when she rushed offstage to her dressing room and downed a bottle of carbolic acid.  She died half an hour later at Emergency Hospital.  A note to her husband, electrician for the company, was brief, but to the point:  "Bert, if you go to heaven, I trust I may go to hell.--W.G."  Moments before fainting at the hospital, the hysterical husband screamed, "I scolded her this afternoon for sending money home, but I wasn't harsh with her.  I never would have thought she'd take it so to heart."  In a separate note to her mother posted the night before, Greene apologized for killing herself.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

John Toye -- The Nice Guy

After ten years in the theatre, Toye joined Scottish Television (STV) in 1976 as anchor for the evening news program Scotland Today.  Ten years and some 3,000 programs later, the newscaster was removed when network executives decided to revamp the show in 1986.  Toye briefly remained with STV presenting What's Your Problem, a weekly consumer program.  As his career declined, Toye began to drink, once even admitting himself to a hospital for a month to control his addiction.  Fined for drunk driving and threatened with jail time should he be convicted again, Toye tried to rebuild his life in Scotland's West Country.  In 1990, he moved into a flat above a charity shop in the Devon village of South Molton and started to look for work.  In two years, the 56-year-old former anchorman landed only occasional work in news programs and a voice-over assignment for a television documentary.

On the afternoon of April 29, 1992, the rector of the church where Toye sang in the choir received a letter from him stating that he intended to kill himself.  The rector rushed to Toye's flat, which was already jammed with police who had been summoned there by a concerned friend of the former newscaster.  Breaking into the flat, authorities found Toye in a sitting position with a gunshot wound to his head and a double-barreled shotgun beside him.  Near the body was a glass and an empty bottle of wine.  Copies of a recently drafted will, a handwritten note, a sealed package for a friend, and a bundle of sheet music were also recovered.  Once asked how he would like to be remembered, Toye had responded:  "Just as a nice guy who tried to do a good job."

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

George A. Davidson, Jr. -- Georgie, the Very Bad Boy

Davidson, a 28-year-old film test director for Fox studio, knew Constance Smith, a married mother of four children, for eight years before becoming hopelessly obsessed with her.  Separated from actress-wife Thelma Roberts and struggling to pay a court judgment for her support, Davidson lived alone in a modest apartment at 7279 Fountain Avenue in Hollywood.  On October 11, 1932, Davidson's repeated threats to kill Smith and then himself if she refused to marry him reached the flash point.  That morning, the film man phoned the 30-year-old woman at her home and threatened to come there and kill her if she refused his marriage demand.  Fearful for her children's safety and with her husband out of town, Smith agreed to meet Davidson later that night at his apartment.  When she arrived at 7:00 P.M., Davidson locked and nailed shut the front door, and for three hours brandished a .38-caliber revolver in her face all the while threatening to kill them both unless she relented.  According to Smith, she had convinced Davidson to let her go when he suddenly fired two shots into his head.

At the scene, police found a note written by the woman to the dead man that read, "Georgie Darling:  You are a very bad boy and I'm not going to love you anymore -- love you enough now.  How about a date tonight?"  Smith maintained that Davidson had forced her to write the incriminating document during the three-hour ordeal.  Davidson left two suicide notes.  In one addressed to his boss at Fox studio, he wrote:  "I have done this because it seems the odds are too much against me."  To his mother, Davidson explained:  "My mind has gone back on me.  Thelma's ... lawyer attached my salary and that, of course, broke me up, not having enough to take care of you....  I am perfectly sane and have planned this whole thing....  I love you and will always love you all.  George."

Monday, August 18, 2014

Geraldine Soles Espe -- Three's Company

One day after a loan company repossessed the furniture in Espe's home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles, the 35-year-old secretary in the office of the Association of Motion Picture Producers loaded her toy fox terrier, "Junior Officer," and her ailing 60-year-old mother into her car and drove off.  The next day, October 22, 1940, a private patrolman in the exclusive Hidden Valley area on the outskirts of the city near the ranch of Will Hays, head of the national producers' group, found the dead trio in a small coupe on the side of the road.  A rubber hose connected to the exhaust pipe led into the car.  A note found in the glove box read, "Insurance policy at office; receipts in hat box in closet.  Will take care of burial."  In Espe's purse was a notice of judgment directing that the furniture be removed from their home.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

George E. Wagner -- The Un-Jolly Jenaro

"Clown Dons Mask of Death After Wife Divorces Him" was the Milwaukee Sentinel headline on August 26, 1934, the day after the popular clown-juggler was found hanged in his room in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Known in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus world as the "Jolly Jenaro," the 55 year old Wagner had been divorced by his wife four months earlier on grounds that the wealthy performer's frugality amounted to stinginess.  Ever the clown, Wagner told the judge, "I've tamed lions and managed unruly cats in a show, but I couldn't handle her."  A week prior to his death, Wagner threatened suicide during a visit with his sister.  When she failed to hear from him for several days, she went to the clown's room at 1212 W. Hadley Street.  Through a side window she saw her brother's body hanging by a bathrobe cord from a light fixture.  Wagner had been dead for 48 hours.  A handwritten will dividing about $15,000 in cash and government bonds among his family was found on a table.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Adrienne LaChamp Keim -- The Suicide Scribe

Keim, a 33-year-old Hungarian actress-singer-dancer, was one of the century's most prolific writer of suicide notes.  On December 12, 1933, she leaped from a 15 floor window of the Hotel Lincoln in New York City, narrowly missing several pedestrians walking below on Forty-fourth Street.  One of the two notes pinned to her dress read:  "Please notify my mother, Mrs. A LaChamp in Shanghai, China.  Please it is my wish to be buried untouched.  I am sorry for the poor English."  In the other, addressed to police, Keim wrote:  "Please keep this out of the papers.  This is just another funeral.  Don't experiment on me and don't try to keep me alive."  Six sealed notes, four addressed to the director of the St. James Theatre and the others to friends, were found in her rooms.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Aziz Ghazal -- The Not So Brave

Ghazal (born in Israel in 1955) emigrated to California where in 1983 he became the stock room chief at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.  While working there in 1990, Ghazal produced the low-budget alternative film The Natural History of Parking Lots, which won critical raves.  By 1993, the 38 year old was becoming noticed by industry power players hot to film a book property he had optioned, Gregory McDonald's The Brave, a novel about an unemployed father who agrees to let himself be killed for money in a "snuff" movie so that his family could reap the profits.  However, unknown to Jodie Foster's Egg Prods. and Touchstone Pictures, Ghazal had signed concurrent legally binding deal memos with both companies for the same property.  As the scheme unraveled, Ghazal was fired from USC in October 1993 following a dispute over a missing camera.  Almost simultaneously, Ghazal's wife of 16 years, Rebecca, sued him for divorce, citing years of family and spousal abuse.  In one documented incident, Ghazal arrived at 13-year-old daughter Khadijah's school and administered a brutal beating to her in front of dumbfounded classmates.
 

 Armed with a restraining order against her volatile husband, Rebecca Ghazal and her three children were living in the couple's get-away home in the small California mountain town of Pine Cove, near Idyllwild in central Riverside County.  On December 1, 1993, Ghazal arrived at the two-story cabin, bludgeoned his wife and daughter Khadijah to death and, after torching the cabin with Molotov cocktails, fled the scene.  His two sons were out of the house at the time of the slayings.  Authorities discovered Ghazal's blood-spattered car stuck in mud some 300 yards from the house, but the aspiring producer's decomposed body was not found until January 9, 1994, when two hikers in a secluded area south of Mt. San Jacinto stumbled across the scene.  A .380-caliber pistol was found near the body.  Forensics suggested that Ghazal had probably shot himself within hours of killing his estranged wife and teenage daughter.  In notes penned three days before the tragedy found in Ghazal's Los Angeles residence, the producer had written, "I can't subject my kids to anymore of this," and "Please forgive me for what I'm about to do."


Wednesday, August 6, 2014

William David Powell, Jr. -- A Better Place

Born in 1925, the son of actor William Powell and first wife, actress Eileen Wilson, was an associate producer for both Warner Bros. and Universal and, for three years, an executive of the National Broadcasting Company before turning to writing for television series.  Powell wrote scripts for Death Valley Days, Rawhide, 77 Sunset Strip, and Bonanza.  Despondent over a chronic kidney condition and hepatitis, Powell used a razor and a steak knife to slash his throat and wrists while in the shower of his garage apartment at 2542 Rinconia Drive in Hollywood.  Powell's landlord found the body on March 13, 1968, after the 43-year-old scriptwriter had not picked up his mail for a week.  The only part of a four page suicide note released to the press said, "Things aren't so good here.  I'm going where it's better."

Friday, August 1, 2014

Eva Mottley -- St. Valentine's Day Massacre

The Barbados-born beauty turned to acting after serving 15 months in a British jail for possession of LSD.  A former girlfriend of rock star David Bowie, Mottley's film credits included Scrubbers (1982) and a small role in Superman III (1983), although she was best known for her starring role as "Bella" in the British television series Widows. Upset over losing her job on the series in August 1984, the 31-year-old actress' allegations of sexual and racial prejudice among the show's production crew were lost amidst a swirl of alcohol and cocaine abuse that left her 25,000 quid in debt.  On February 14, 1985, St. Valentine's Day, Mottley was found slumped on her knees by the telephone in her flat in Shirland Road, Maida Vale, West London.  In her depression, Mottley had downed a deadly cocktail of barbiturates and alcohol.  Two notes, one addressed to her parents and tucked in her bedclothes, and the other on a writing pad begun normally in blue ink and ending illegibly in red, were found at the scene.