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."

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.