Kenney was editor of the Harvard Lampoon while a student there. He, along with select others such as Henry Beard, helped give the humor magazine a makeover. Kenney graduated in 1969 and along with Beard and another Harvard alum (Robert Hoffman) created National Lampoon magazine.

Kenney’s style of comedy was new, edgy, and dark, something a country reeling from the misguidance of the Vietnam War and on the verge of the Watergate scandal desperately needed. Kenney served as the Editor-in-Chief from 1970 until 1972. He served as Senior Editor in 1973 and 1974 before being named Editor from 1975 until 1976. National Lampoon was eventually bought out by publisher 21 Century Communications, which netted Kenney, Beard, and Hoffman a then tidy sum of $7 million dollars.

By 1977, Kenney quit National Lampoon to work on a screenplay for National Lampoon’s Animal House with Chris Miller and Harold Ramis. Kenney even took the small role of “Stork” in the film. The film was a huge success, becoming the most profitable comedy of its time.

Next up for Kenney was co-writing Caddyshack with Bill Murray’s older brother Brian Doyle-Murry and Harold Ramis. Kenney worked hard on the film, but played just as hard. Jon Peters later recalled in a biography that during the 11 week shoot, “debauchery reigned every night.”

The film opened to mostly bad reviews. Roger Ebert said, “Caddyshack feels more like a movie that was written rather loosely, so that when shooting began there was freedom - too much freedom - for it to wander off in all directions in search of comic inspiration.” New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby felt the film wasn’t as funny as Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie.

Kenney was spinning out of control. He was extremely sensitive to two things – criticism of his work and cocaine. In one scene in Caddyshack, Kenney can be seen in the background cutting a line of cocaine.

A drunken Kenney verbally lashed out at reporters during a press conference for the film. Friends were worried about him and asked him to seek professional help, but by this time, Kenney was joking about suicide, driving recklessly, and increasing his cocaine intake.

Trying to help his friend, Chevy Chase took Kenney to Kauai, Hawaii for a relaxing getaway. The two spent three weeks relaxing, playing tennis, and flirting with pretty girls. Chase had to return for work, so Kenney’s girlfriend, actress Kathryn Walker, came out to keep him company. Walker had been away on a shoot for three months, but the reunion didn’t go well. Within days, she returned to Los Angeles, leaving Kenney alone in Hawaii.

Kenney called Doyle-Murray to apologize for Caddyshack being a failure and not making them “wealthy.” He also talked to Walker and promised to be home by Labor Day. He asked Chase to return to Hawaii but by the time Chase got there, it would be too late.

Before he left, Chase received a call that Kenney was missing. After he got there, Kenney was found dead at the bottom of a cliff on August 31, 1980. His body had laid there for three days before being discovered. An autopsy suggested that Kenney had died upon impact, with a fractured skull and ribs. His shoes were left at the top of the cliff. Chase, who had a running joke with Kenney about jumping out of his cowboy boots, wondered if the shoes were left for him by Kenney as one last bizarre joke.

Did Kenney fall? Did drug dealers push the tortured comedian off the cliff? Or, had the perceived failure of the film plus a growing drug addiction pushed him over the edge? The world would never know.

In his room, Kenney had left notes, including one written on the bathroom mirror to Kathryn that read “I love you” and one that said, “These are some of the happiest days I’ve ever ignored.” After his death, good friend Ramis, who later visited the cliff where Kenney died, joked that Kenney “probably fell while he was looking for a place to jump.” Ramis would pay homage to Kenney by naming a character after him in his 1996 film Multiplicity. After Kenney’s funeral, Bill Murray noted that “every funny person in the world was there. And no one laughed.”

Caddyshack would go on to make $40 million at the box office – a hit in those days. The American Film Institute ranked it #71 in the 100 Funniest American Films in 2000 and Bravo listed it as #2 in its 100 Funniest Movies.

Reeves was a handsome man and soon after arriving in Hollywood, he signed to a contract with Warner Bros.  However, after appearing in some B-movies and the flop <i>Lydia</i>, Reeves was released from his contract.  He freelanced for a while before being drafted into the Army during World War II.  He was transferred to the Army Air Forces and landed a gig on the Broadway show Winged Victory.  After leaving the Army, Reeves took work where he could find it, finally moving to New York after his 1949 divorce from Ellanora Needles (Wikipedia). 

Less than two years later, he returned to Hollywood and was offered the role he would be remembered for – as Superman on the new DC Comics television series.  Reeves didn’t exactly jump at the role because like many, he felt television wasn’t as important as movies and the pay wasn’t that great.  The contract also prevented Reeves from seeking many movie roles.

Still, the job did pay and Reeves collected extra money from paid appearances as Superman.  He took his clean-cut Superman image seriously except in one area – romance.  The same year he took on the Superman role, he began an affair with Toni Mannix, the wife of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer general manager Eddie Mannix. 

Soon, Reeves grew bored with the Superman role and wanted to break out of the superhero stereotype.  He made a few films, sang on the Tony Bennett show, and appeared on “I Love Lucy” albeit as Superman.

In 1958, he broke up with Toni and quickly afterwards, announced his engagement to Leonore Lemmon.  However, the Reeves/Lemmon pairing was explosive, with the couple often fighting in public.  Accounts of Reeves mental state varied.  Some said that he was depressed about the break up with Toni and financial problems while others said he was looking forward to new career adventures, including a televised fight with light heavyweight champion Archie Moore.  He was also set to star and direct a feature film later in the year.  And, he was getting married to Lemmon, reportedly on June 19th (CourtTV ).

Some felt that Toni didn’t take being dumped too nicely.  Before his death, Reeves was involved in a puzzling series of car accidents.  Once, his car was crushed between two trucks on the freeway and another time, a speeding car almost hit him.  A third time, his breaks failed.  His mechanic suggested that the break fluid had been drained by someone.  Adding to the mystery was the fact that all three incidents occurred within three months.

Reeves also received death threats on the phone.  Was it Toni?  Was it her jealous husband Eddie?  Reeves filed a report with the police department, but the calls were never explained. 

On the night of June 16, 1959, friend Robert Condon was staying at Reeves’ Benedict Canyon home.  Reeves, Condon and Lemmon retired for the night around midnight, but at 1:00 a.m., friend Carol Von Ronkel knocked on the door with her friend William Bliss and was allowed entrance into the house.  While everyone else stayed downstairs to party, Reeves went back up to the bedroom.

Moments later a shot rang out.  When the guests ran upstairs, they found Reeves lying on his back with a gunshot wound to the temple.  George “Superman” Reeves was dead at age 45.  What seems odd is that it took the guests 45 minutes to call the police.  None of the guests ever gave a reason for the delay, but it is widely believed that they wanted to sober up a bit before the police arrived.

Lemmon said Reeves had been playing with a gun earlier that night and his best friend and business manager Arthur Weissman admitted that Reeves liked playing the morbid prank of putting a gun loaded with blanks to his head and pulling the trigger.  Reeves had also been drinking – his blood alcohol level was .27 – and was taking prescription pills for pain, but did that have anything to do with the shooting?

Rumors soon started that Reeves was murdered, especially after many friends claimed he would never take his own life.  As evidence of a homicide, some pointed out that there was no powder marks or burns from the discharge of the gun found on Reeves’ head wound.  Weissman tried to explain this away, saying Reeves was so used to pulling this prank that he kept the gun far enough away from his head to prevent powder burns.

Yet, Weissman also believed Reeves was murdered.  He felt that Eddie Mannix had someone replace the blanks in Reeves’ gun with real bullets, knowing that Reeves liked to fire at his head.  Oddly enough, Eddie knew about the affair between the two and rumors are that Toni and Reeves used to double date with Eddie.

Other clues that this might have been a homicide were the fact that the gun was found between Reeves’ feet, not in his hand.  While the bullet that killed Reeves was found in the ceiling (suggesting Reeves was at an odd angle when shot), there were also two additional bullet holes found in the floor of the room, covered by a rug.

While the room showed no signs of intrusion, no one really knows who was at the home that night. And because she bought the house for Reeves, Toni Mannix had a key.

The police chalked the death up to suicide without much investigation.  They didn’t even take fingerprints of the room.  But, Reeves’ mother, Helen Besselo, always believed her son was murdered.  She had detectives working on the case up until her death in 1964.

Eddie Mannix died in 1963, but Toni never remarried.  She died in 1983.  Publicist Edward Lozzi claimed that he heard Toni confessed to a Catholic priest that she had Reeves murdered.  However, this is disputable, since Lozzi claims to have lived with Toni during the last ten years of her life and she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

Lenore Lemmon left California four days after Reeves’ death, but not before taking $5,000 in traveler’s checks with her, which were to be used on the couple’s honeymoon.  She returned $4,000 after it was noticed the checks were missing (The Chasing Frog).  Lemmon died in 1989.

Rebecca began modeling at the age of 16, even appearing on the cover of Seventeen magazine. She moved to New York to pursue acting. It wasn’t long before she landed the role of Patti Russell on the CBS sitcom My Sister Sam and moved back to Los Angeles. The series, which also starred Pam Dawber, ran for two seasons. After its cancellation in 1988, Rebecca appeared in several movies, including two that were made-for-television. Rebecca also served as the spokesperson for Thursday’s Child, a charity that supports at-risk teens.

Sadly, Rebecca’s thriving acting career ended prematurely. While it wasn’t publicly known at the time, Rebecca had been stalked by Robert John Bardo for three years prior to her death. Bardo had written her letters in the past. One such letter, answered by her fan service, included a photo and autograph. Almost two years before her death, Bardo showed up on the set of My Sister Sam to see Rebecca, but was turned away. He returned a month later to the set, this time, armed with a knife. He was once again turned away by security. Rebecca got a brief break from Bardo when he returned to his home in Tucson and focused on teen singers Debbie Gibson and Tiffany.

However, Bardo’s obsession was reignited when he saw Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. In the movie, Rebecca appeared in bed with a male actor and in Bardo’s warped mind, she had lost her innocence. Bardo set out to murder Rebecca, but first, he had to find her address. Unfortunately, he learned how to do that from another stalker. Bardo read that Arthur Richard Jackson had obtained actress Theresa Saldana’s address by hiring a private investigator, so he did the same. It cost him $250 to hire a Tucson detective to obtain Rebecca’s home address through California Department of Motor Vehicles records, which were public at the time.

Bardo went to Los Angeles on July 18, 1989 and visited Rebecca’s apartment, asking people he saw if Rebecca really lived there. He rang the doorbell and Rebecca answered. Bardo showed her the fan letter and autograph that had been sent to him earlier. They talked briefly and shook hands before Bardo left, but the conversation ended with Rebecca asking Bardo not to come to her home again.

Bardo went down the street and ate breakfast. An hour later, he appeared at Rebecca’s door, which she once again answered. Bardo said she had a “cold look on her face” and told him he was wasting her time. He pulled his Ruger GP100 revolver from a brown paper bag and shot Rebecca once in the chest at point-blank range. He fled the scene and hearing the screams, neighbor Richard Goldman called for an ambulance. Rebecca was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she was pronounced dead 30 minutes after arriving. She was 21 years old. Because Bardo was underage at the time (19), he got his brother to purchase the revolver he used to kill Rebecca.

Bardo was apprehended the next day in Tucson running madly in traffic and immediately confessed to the murder. LAPD had been tipped off by a friend of Bardo’s that he might be the suspect they were looking for because he was obsessed with Rebecca. Once Tucson police faxed a photo, LAPD confirmed it was him though witness identification.

Bardo was sentenced to life in prison without parole. In July 2007, he was stabbed 11 times at the Mule Creek State Prison by another inmate. He was treated at the UC Davis Medical Center then returned to prison.

At the time of her death, Rebecca was getting ready to audition for a role in The Godfather III. Instead, she would be featured in the first episode of E! True Hollywood Story…posthumously.

Some good did come from the tragedy as the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 was enabled. It stated that the DMV could no longer release private addresses. The LAPD also created the Threat Management Unit to deal with threats to public figures and stalking cases.
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Brad Davis was born into a middle class family which unfortunately included an alcoholic father and a mother who was sexually attached to her son. It must have been that childhood that both confused and angered Davis as an adult. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and also studied acting in New York at the American Place Theater. Davis’ wife, Susan Bluestein, said in “After Midnight: The Life and Death of Brad Davis” that he had been forced to hustle in Times Square to survive and at one point, had lived with a transvestite.

Davis appeared in several plays before appearing in the soap opera “How to Survive a Marriage” in 1974. When he appeared in the 1976 made for television film “Sybil,” people really began to take notice. The next year, he appeared in the highly acclaimed miniseries “Roots.”

In 1978, Davis landed the role of Billy Hayes in Midnight Express. By the way, the movie differs in many ways from the book, which is a real life account. Davis’ performance was incredible and while earning him a Golden Globe fore Best New Actor, it failed to get him an Oscar nod. After Midnight Express, Davis expected offers to come pouring in. They didn’t. His wild behavior, both on and off the set, didn’t help matters. Brad Davis was, for whatever reason, tormented by inner demons he couldn’t control.

He had had a problem with alcohol for some time, but during the filming of Midnight Express began using the drug of choice at that time – cocaine. By 1981, he had joined Alcoholics Anonymous, but not before having bouts of erratic behavior, some which ended in arrests and probably ruined many film opportunities.

In 1983, Davis took a risk by appearing in Querelle as a gay sailor, but the film was a flop. He won critical acclaim in 1985 when he appeared in the play “The Normal Heart.” In the play, Davis portrayed the lover of a man dying of AIDS. In real life, he himself was dying of AIDS.

Speculation ranges from drug use to homosexual contact as how Davis contracted AIDS, but in order to keep working, Davis kept his disease a secret. Bluestein claims in her book that Davis was heterosexual, but many claimed that his bisexuality was well known.

Although Davis continued to work, he never regained the fame of his Midnight Express days. Before his death, he and Bluestein started working on the book that would tell his life story, but it wasn’t published until 1997. Davis died, reportedly of an intentional overdose with his wife present, on September 8, 1991. He was 41 years old and left behind his daughter, Alexandra, who was eight at the time.

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Sammy was born Samuel George Davis, Jr. in Harlem on December 8, 1925 of an African American father and a Puerto Rican mother.  When his parents divorced at age 3, Sammy Sr. took little Sammy out on the road with him.  While Sammy didn’t receive a lot of formal education, he learned a lifetime about dancing, singing, and entertaining on the road.  Mastin and Sammy Sr. tried to shield little Sammy from racism as much as they could, but in the early 20th century in America, that was not possible.  For most of his life, Sammy would be torn between his actions and what was expected of him by Black Americans.

After a brief stint in the Army, the diminutive superstar began releasing albums and playing nightclubs, but while returning from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on November 19, 1954, Sammy was involved in a horrible car accident.  He survived, but it cost him his left eye.  He wore an eye patch for several months before being fitting with a glass eye.  While in the hospital, friend Eddie Cantor pointed out to Sammy the similarities between the Jewish and Black cultures.  Sammy converted to Judaism shortly thereafter.  

In 1956, Sammy appeared on Broadway in Mr. Wonderful.  Three years later, he would become a part of a group that defined much of his life – the Rat Pack.  Hanging with Sinatra and pals was a fast living situation that Sammy loved.  The booze flowed freely and women were always available.  Sammy also seemed to have enjoyed the power that came from hanging out with some of Sinatra’s more unsavory friends such as mob bosses Sam Giancana and Lucky Luciano.  By many accounts, Sinatra would both protect Sammy and at the same time, take advantage of his friend through their long friendship.

Sammy headlined at The Frontier Casino in Las Vegas for years, but as a black performer, he was forced to lay his head each night in a rooming house on the other side of town.  Eventually, Sammy would boycott venues that practiced segregation.  Through the efforts of him and others, clubs in Vegas and Miami eventually ended segregation.  Another of Sammy’s proudest moments was when he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King for civil rights in the ‘60s.

But, Sammy often found himself on the outs with other blacks.  He dated white actress Kim Novak in the mid-‘50s until he was reportedly kidnapped by a mobster and strong armed into ending the relationship.  He married black singer Loray White in 1958, but the marriage ended the next year.  He married white actress May Britt in 1960, when interracial marriage was still illegal in 31 states.  The two had a daughter and adopted two sons, long rumored to have been Sammy’s biological children by other women. 

Always the performer, Sammy spent little time at home and that, plus word of his affair with black singer Lola Falana, ended the marriage in 1968.  Later that year, Sammy began dating Altovise Gore, a “Golden Boy” dancer, in which he was starring.  Sammy would later tell friends he never really loved Altovise and some said she suffered in the marriage, yet loved being “Mrs. Sammy Davis Jr.”  The couple later adopted a son.

Sammy had supported Kennedy in the ‘60s, but when Kennedy disinvited Sammy from his inauguration due to his interracial marriage, Sammy became interested in the Republican Party.  Genuinely believing Nixon wanted to help black Americans gain equality; Sammy threw his support to the administration, even giving Nixon a hug live on television, which further infuriated his peers.

Sammy worked hard through his career, but he didn’t pay attention to the books and the people he chose to help only seemed to have paid close attention if it profited them.  By the ‘70s, Sammy was in financial trouble, but Sinatra helped bail him out briefly with the “Together Again” Rat Pack tour in the late ‘80s. 

Still, Sammy invested in bad schemes over the years and owed the IRS money in back taxes.  In addition, he was spending way more than he was earning, including salaries of his enormous entourage.  Sammy learned he had throat cancer in 1989 and rather than have surgery performed to remove part of his throat, Sammy, thinking there was no life if he could not sing, choose against it.  He died of throat cancer on May 16, 1990.  Before he was buried, his wife Altovise removed all the jewelry from his body and his glass eye.

With Sammy’s estate in ruin, attorney Albert “Sonny” Murray, Jr. came into Altovise’s life to help not only get her clean and sober, but restore Sammy’s great legacy.  Murphy got the IRS to reduce the $5.1 million dollars owed to a little less than $400,000 and tried to set up recording and movie deals that would return Sammy’s image to the public eye. 

Murphy spent 8 years with very little pay pouring over hundreds of thousands of documents to try to find out what happened to the estate of Sammy Davis Jr.  What he found was mismanagement by managers and lawyers, so Murphy worked hard to get debts paid, locate Sammy’s master recordings, set up deals to restore Sammy’s good name, and even get Sammy awarded his only Grammy (posthumously), only to be dismissed with little fanfare by Altovise.  After the dismissal of Murphy, the estate again fell into disarray as the IRS settlement was not honored.

Sammy’s kids didn’t get much from his estate, about half a million each in life insurance.  Daughter Tracey believes the children were cheated out of insurance money by Sammy’s entourage including his manager and lawyer.  She produced a trust Sammy set up in 1964, giving her and her brothers the majority of any earnings from his name and image.  But, at his death, Sammy supposedly gave those rights to Altovise.  Tracey is still fighting for those rights.

For more information, read “Deconstructing Sammy,” a truly incredible, yet heartbreaking book just released by Matt Birkbeck.

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Loretta Young was fresh off an affair with Man’s Castle co-star Spencer Tracy when she signed on to film The Call of the Wild with Clark Gable. Maybe it was the wilderness setting of Mount Baker, Washington or maybe it was just Gable’s intrigue with Tracy, but Gable and Young’s immediate connection soon turned into a full fledge affair. Clark was still married to Rhea Langham, but continued to date Young even after the filming was over.

By 1935, Young found herself pregnant. Because she was devout Catholic, Young knew she could not abort the baby, yet admitting that she was having a child out of wedlock would surely ruin her career. She postponed all film commitments, blaming an illness, and fled to England with her mother. However, after being hounded by the press thee, she returned to America. She hid away in her Venice Beach house until she gave birth to their daughter Judy on November 6, 1935. On November 18, Gable made the official announcement that he and his wife were separated then called Young requesting to see their child. She declined, saying the baby was out of town.

By the end of November, Young was back at work while a nurse tended to the baby. By January 1936, Young finally decided to let Gable visit his daughter. He found her sleeping in a bureau draw. Reportedly, he gave Young $400 and said “the least you can do is buy her a decent bed.” She then pushed Gable away, fearing that if they were seen together, people would make the connection.

Several months later, Judy was sent to the St. Elizabeth’s Infant Hospital in San Francisco, where she would remain for five months. After that, Young “adopted” her. In June 1937, Young told famed gossip columnist Louella Parsons that she had adopted two daughters, 3 year old Jane and 23 ½ month Judy. However, the Jane part was just a ruse – Young never adopted another child and weeks later, announced that Jane’s birth mother had changed her mind about the adoption.

Young’s story fooled very few in Hollywood, especially since young Judy had been gifted with her father’s famous ears. When Young married writer/producer Thomas Lewis in 1939, he adopted Judy, although the two never had a close relationship. Young and Gable would work together again on the set of 1950’s Key to the City. Judy met Gable, without realizing he was indeed her birth father. After the two talked for several hours and Gable departed her with a kiss on the forehead. The two would never meet again.

Judy needed a passport in 1956. While trying to sort out her birth documentation, Judy began to realize that Young was her birth mother. However, Judy did not confront her with this knowledge until she was engaged to be married two years later at the age of 23 and her fiancé confirmed what all of Hollywood already knew. Judy went on to see acting success as her mother’s career declined, which lead to a separation between the two. In 1994, Judy, who had quit acting to become a therapist, would write “Uncommon Knowledge,” which was about her life. Young was upset, but the two mended the fences before Young died in 2000. That year, “Forever Young,” Young’s authorized biography was published. In it, she finally admitted that Judy was a lovechild produced from a union with Gable and that she had gone to extreme lengths to cover up the scandal.

Still, the Gable family refused to recognize Judy as one of their own. Son John Clark Gable said “My father said he had no other children and my father’s word is good enough for me.” Judy never had a DNA test, saying that her mother’s word was enough for her.  (The image above is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice.)

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Still, the world knew no different and the boys, after appearing on their father’s holiday specials, formed a nightclub act, The Crosby Boys. That didn’t last long as the siblings fought and the act ended in 1959.

Lindsay, Phillip, and Dennis all appeared in the Rat Pack laden film Sergeants 3, but after that, Lindsay starred in easily forgettable films like The Girls from Thunder Strip, The Glory Stomps, and Murf the Surf.

Lindsay married his first wife Barbara D. Frederickson in 1960, but after two children, the couple was divorced in late 1962. He married Janet Sue Schwartze in February 1966. That married produce one child, but ended in divorce in a little over a year and a half. His marriage to third wife Susan Marlin produced two children and lasted from 1968 until 1978.

Bing died on the golf course in October 1977. In 1983, Gary wrote “Going My Own Way,” which destroyed his father’s reputation as the perfect father. He said Bing beat the boys until they bled, called them names like “Bucket Butt” and “The Head,” and suggested they not drink, since it killed their mother, but smoke pot instead. Phillip insisted that Gary had over exaggerated the situation. However, Phillip and Lindsay agreed, at least in part, with what Gary wrote. Lindsay went as far as to say “Gary said what needed to be said.” He also said that he remembered all the good things and forgot the rough times. Bing’s brother, bandleader Bob Crosby, said he never remembered Bing being physical with the boys and his second wife Kathryn, wrote “My Life With Bing,” which painted a rosy recollection of the family life she experience with Bing and their three children, Harry, Mary, and Nathaniel.

Something must have been eating at Lindsay though. Prone to listening to his father’s Christmas music during the holidays, on December 11, 1989, after suffering a bout with depression and a painful breakup with girlfriend Pam Desnon, Lindsay took a gun and shot himself in the head. He was 51 years old. He had watched his father’s holiday classic film White Christmas less than 23 hours beforehand.

Lindsay wasn’t the only brother to be dealt a heavy hand by fate. In May 1991, distraught over his brother’s death and dealing with alcoholism, Dennis shot himself in the head as well. He was 56 years old.
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Sean showed up on The Errol Flynn Theatre once when he was 16. He then attended Duke University, but when Errol died of a heart attack in 1959, Sean decided he had had enough of school and set out for Hollywood.

His first film was Where the Boys Are (1960). After that, he starred in The Son of Captain Blood, a sequel of his father’s famous film. His last film was 1967’s Singapore, Singapore. Sean appeared in eight feature films during his career.

In 1968, Sean, now a freelance photographer, set out for Vietnam, then in the middle of the conflict. He went deep into the jungle, often with Special Forces, to get gripping photos of the war.

On April 6, 1970, Sean, working for Time Magazine, and his friend Dana Stone, working for CBS, rented motorbikes and set out from Phnom Penh for Cambodia. The two were stopped at an eastern Cambodia checkpoint, where they were captured by the Viet Cong. They were never seen again. Sean was declared legally dead in 1984, but his mother hoped for his return until her death in 1994.

In 1981, Sean was immortalized in The Clash’s song “Sean Flynn,” which appeared on their Combat Rock album.
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By the time she was a teenager, Diana was playing Ann in the touring company of Outward Bound. John called her “the best thing I’ve ever produced” yet the two weren’t very close, despite their shared interests in acting and Brandy Alexanders.

Signed by Universal to a $1,000 a week contract at the age of 20, Diana attended the premiere of her first feature film “Eagle Squadron” on the day of her father’s death - May 29, 1942. John died of cirrhosis of the liver brought about by years of alcoholism.

Not living up to the famous Barrymore name and being a bit of a diva, Diana refused to appear in an Abbott & Costello film, which prompted Universal to suspend her for six months. After that, all she got was small roles in small films.

By the age of 33, Diana had six screen credits to her name as well as two disastrous, failed marriages under her belt. She had squandered all her wealth and in addition to alcoholism and drug addiction, fought off severe depression, attempting suicide several times and making frequent stays at sanitariums. In 1957, she and Gerold Frank co-wrote her autobiography “Too Much Too Soon,” in which she spoke about her troubled life. The book was made into a movie in 1958, starring Dorothy Malone as Diana.

Death too came too soon for Diana. She was found dead in her second floor apartment by the maid on January 25, 1960. The cause of death? It was heart failure due to a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills. Diana Blance Barrymore was 33 years old.
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While working in the kitchen of a hotel, he caught the attention of a local performer who took him to amateur night at a local theater. Arbuckle won and David Grauman recruited him as a singer and dancer in Vaudeville.

By 1909, he had made his film debut in “Ben’s Kids” and married 17-year-old Araminta “Minty” Durfee. After appearing as one of Mac Sennett’s Keystone Cops, Arbuckle began starring in films and even set up his own production company, Comique Film Corporation.

However, Arbuckle lived as large as he was. He was drinking heavily and Minty left him in 1917. In 1921, Arbuckle signed a 3 year, $3 million dollar contract with Paramount Studios, making him one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood.

Arbuckle found himself working too hard and in September 1921, he and friend Fred Fishbach decided to take a weekend trip to San Francisco . It would be a decision that would change Arbuckle’s life forever.

There was heavy partying going on that weekend in Arbuckle’s St. Francis hotel suite. Although uninvited, sometime actress Virginia Rappe and “Bambina” Maude Delmont, who had a rap sheet as long as your arm, showed up at the party. Arbuckle went into the bedroom about 3:00 p.m. and noticed Rappe lying in the bathroom floor. He placed her on the bed and gave her water. Arbuckle left the room, but when he returned with others, they found Rappe screaming in pain.

The hotel management was finally called. Rappe was moved to room 1227 and a doctor was called. After the doctor arrived Arbuckle thought everything was okay and left, never seeing Rappe again. She died four days later of peritonitis. Delmont filed rape and murder charges against Arbuckle.

Naturally, when word of the charges got out, the press went crazy. Innocent until proven guilty did not apply in the eyes of the press for Arbuckle. Rumors swirled that Arbuckle had actually raped Rappe with a coke bottle, causing her death, turned him into a monster in the eyes of the public. However, Delmont couldn’t be pinned down about what actually went on in the bedroom that weekend, changing her story over and over. Many came to the defense of Arbuckle, including comedian Buster Keaton and even his ex-wife Minty. The judge dropped the charges from murder to manslaughter and they might have been dropped completely had the public outrage not been so high.

The first trial began on November 14, 1921 with Arbuckle testifying on the stand. Medical experts claimed that Rappe’s condition appeared to have existed before she attended the party. However, the jury was deadlocked 10-2 for acquittal. A second trial was held and it too was deadlocked, this time, 10-2 for conviction.

It was only after a third trial that Arbuckle was finally acquitted of the charges. A statement from the jury of the third trial read in part, “We feel that a great injustice has been done him” and “that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free of all blame.”

However, the acquittal was not enough. Arbuckle’s contract with Paramount had been cancelled and he had to sell most of his assets to pay lawyer fees. He was virtually broke with no film roles on the horizon, although he was able to make a bit of a living as a film director under an assumed name. Arbuckle married and divorced his second wife Doris Deane. He married his third wife Addie McPhail and ten years after the scandal, he finally signed a contract with Warner Brothers in 1932. He completed six two-reel comedies then was signed to a long-term contract.

However, a heart attack derailed Arbuckle’s road back to success. He died at the age of 46 on June 29, 1933, after spending the night celebrating his new contract. Friend Buster Keaton said Arbuckle died of a broken heart.
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