The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (29 page)

When the letter was written, the once-great star then took the decision to end her life in a most unconventional way – by poisoning herself with ant paste which she had previously bought to quell the legions of insects that had invaded her home. Not surprisingly, Florence’s death was slow and painful and, before she finally succumbed, she was discovered by passer-by Marian Menzer who had heard her screaming in agony and ran into the house. The woman was shocked by the sight of Lawrence’s poisoned body, writhing in front of her, but was unable to do anything to help, so she instead phoned an ambulance which rushed Lawrence to the Beverly Hills Receiving Hospital, where she passed away shortly afterwards.

Ironically, as with several other actresses that succeeded her, newspapers reported that at the exact moment she died, a phone call was going through to offer her a part in a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, though this – as always – is questionable. What we do know for sure is that tragically the former star’s death received scant column inches in the newspapers, and her funeral was announced with as few words as possible.

She was buried on 30 December 1938 and just days later her brother George H. Lawrence was involved in a fist fight with her friends, Norman and Robert Brindlow, outside her home, over who was to take possession of her personal belongings. That of course, the newspapers were happy to report on, and gave the story more inches than they had ever dreamt of giving her death.

Although Florence made more than 300 films in her short life, in death, as she had been in the last years of her life, Florence was then forgotten and sadly her grave at the Hollywood Forever cemetery was left without a headstone, such was the level of concern for her remembrance. Fortunately, in 1991 actor Roddy McDowall heard the tragic story of the forgotten star, and took the decision to pay for a memorial himself. The stone that was installed reads fittingly: “Florence Lawrence, The Biograph Girl. The First Movie Star.” At last she can be remembered, if only in this small way.

Clark Gable was always known as something of a he-man in the movies. Women wanted to date him while men wanted to be just like him; able to throw a punch, beat the baddies and claim the woman all in one fell swoop. But while his tough guy attitude was mainly for the sake of his film roles, towards the end of the 1930s he was able to show the world just how hard he actually was when faced with an intruder right in the middle of his real-life home.

At the end of July 1939, Clark Gable and his new wife, actress Carole Lombard, were at their beloved ranch at 4545 Petit Street, Encino. They had been dating and secretly living together for some time but had not married earlier because of the reluctance of Gable’s wife Ria to divorce her estranged husband. But now everything was above board and the two actors were happily living together, doing up the house and making a home for themselves. However, it very nearly became a murder scene on the morning of 31 July, when Gable waved goodbye to his wife on her way to the studio, before heading out of the house in order to dig ditches in the orchard.

What seemed like a normal, run-of-the-mill day was actually not quite what it seemed, as some time during the previous night, a young man by the name of Willard Broski had come to the ranch and begun peering into the couple’s windows. Without anyone noticing what he was up to, Broski eyed up the impressive set of rifles and guns that Gable kept in his private gun room, and admired various other possessions as he gawped through the windows.

Seeing an opportunity to make some money, the eighteen-year-old man decided he was going to help himself to Gable’s firearms, but there was too much going on at the property to enable him to get in and out without being seen. Incredibly, it was at that point that instead of just going home, the young man actually decided to stay on site until morning and made his way to the garage where he encountered the Gables’ guard dog asleep inside the car. Thankfully what could have been a bloody situation actually ended peacefully, as somehow Broski was able to make friends with the dog and actually fell asleep in the car with the hound curled up beside him. This almost unbelievable turn of events led Carole Lombard and Clark Gable to later sarcastically rename the boxer, “Old Dependable”.

The next morning, while Clark Gable was out in the orchard, Broski exited the garage and watched the kitchen windows. Eventually, the cook, Fanny Jacobson, came to the door in order to let out the cat, and while her back was turned for just a moment, Broski took the chance to enter the home. When Fanny turned back into the kitchen and saw the intruder, the shocked woman immediately asked what he was doing there. He told her that he was a friend of Gable and had come to visit, which was something she took to be an out-and-out lie.

Fanny tried not to let the man know she was nervous and instead asked him to leave the house which he did. She then went to find her boss but while she was gone, the butler, William Mildner, went out of the back door and not knowing that there was an intruder on the ranch, he left it ajar. Unbelievably, Broski still had not taken the hint that he wasn’t welcome and seeing the door open, decided to enter after the butler had gone. He then snooped around the ground floor for a few moments, had a good look around Gable’s gun room and then tiptoed upstairs to see what he could find up there.

Meanwhile, out in the orchard, a ring that Gable was wearing proved to be something of a nuisance while he was digging, so he retired from the garden to go back into the house and rid himself of it. At this point Fanny Jacobson was still looking for the actor and had not yet caught up with him by the time he had left the orchard. This meant that while walking upstairs Gable had no idea that there was an intruder in the house or that there was anything wrong at all. Feeling somewhat hot after digging the orchard all morning, he decided to take an impromptu shower and began taking off his jewellery in the mirrored dressing room. It was at that point that the actor was shocked to see a figure disappearing behind a closet door.

“I yelled for the intruder to come out,” Gable later testified, and at that point, the door slowly opened and Broski entered the room. The actor was shocked to discover the intruder and even more so when he noticed one of his own guns sticking out of his jacket. Without a second thought – and living up to his he-man reputation – Gable wasted no time in showing his displeasure. “I let him have it behind the ear,” he later told reporter Peter Martin of the
Saturday Evening Post
. According to court records he testified that in order to protect himself, Gable grabbed Broski, threw him to the floor and took the gun away from him. “That’s about all there was to it,” he added, very matter-of-factly.

Gable demanded the young man leave the bedroom and accompany him downstairs, to which the intruder apparently took great exception. Instead of coming quietly, he amazingly refused point blank to leave the bedroom, a decision which both confused and infuriated the already stressed Gable. When the man continued to resist, the actor finally lost his patience, grabbed the undeterred Broski by the collar and proceeded to drag him downstairs and into the kitchen. “It was a bouncy drag,” Gable later exclaimed.

Once in the kitchen, the actor let go of Broski and noticed that the young man was little more than a kid, “He didn’t look more than twenty-one,” Gable told Peter Martin.

“Why are you here?” Gable demanded, to which Broski replied that he was in need of some money.

“Well, you have a peculiar way of asking for it,” Gable told him. “There are better ways.”

Seeing how young the intruder was, Gable decided to go easy on him and began lecturing Broski on why it was wrong to enter a person’s house and snoop around. Telling him that there was no way he should be doing things like this to other people, the actor asked Broski, “Aren’t you sorry?”

“No!” snapped the burglar and made a break for the door. He wasn’t quick enough, however, and Gable tackled him to the ground and called the police. “If he had shown any remorse I wouldn’t have called the cops,” he later said.

The young man was carted off to the local station, where he was photographed by reporters behind bars and dressed smartly in a suit, shirt and tie. Later Gable was called to testify against Broski in a Van Nuys courtroom, where he was appearing on a burglary charge. Accompanying the actor was Carole Lombard, their cook Fanny and butler William, who all sat in the spectators’ gallery and watched as Gable calmly told everyone in the court what had happened.

Eventually, the judge bound Broski over on a burglary charge and told him to come back to court on 19 August to be arraigned. Gable never heard from the young man again, but did surprisingly sympathize with him. “I am sorry it happened,” he told reporters outside the courtroom. “He’s only a boy who got off on the wrong foot. I hope he gets off without too much trouble.”

The Shelton Apartments once stood at 1735 North Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood and, in the golden age of Hollywood, they were considered extremely luxurious. A number of actors and actresses lived there, but unfortunately it was because of two suicides that the building became notorious and was unofficially rechristened “The Suicide Apartments” by macabre members of the public.

The first suicide came in 1941, when dancer Jenny Dolly decided to end her life in a rented suite at the hotel . . .

Born on 25 October 1892 in Hungary, identical twins Roszika (Rosie) and Janszieka (Jenny) Deutsch immigrated to the United States in 1905, where they both developed an interest in vaudeville and dance. Perfecting their elaborate dance act before mirrors, they christened themselves “The Dolly Sisters” and joined the circuit as teenagers, debuting at the Union Square Theater in New York. So successful were they that the pair went on to appear in vaudeville circuits all over the United States before travelling to Paris and London, and finally signing with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1911.

The sisters became famous not only for their theatre and cinema performances, but also for their beauty. Dubbed “The Most Beautiful Girls in the World”, the Dolly Sisters took good care of themselves and were always seen dressed to impress; they were sophisticated, glamorous and worldly-wise. They also had a love for gambling, winning huge amounts of money in Cannes and Deauville and gaining a reputation for themselves as being extremely lucky in the casino. Indeed, Rosie later bragged that she had made $400,000 playing roulette one evening, while Jenny went one better by being rumoured to have broken the bank at Monte Carlo.

To go with their love of glamour and clothes came an obsession with other material possessions, too, and Jenny in particular was a keen collector of fancy jewellery, receiving much of it from admirers and would-be boyfriends. One day she spotted a huge diamond ring that was worth a staggering quarter of a million dollars. She did not have to think long before she had acquired it for her collection, though she later regretted bragging about its value to the French media when she was forced to pay a fine of $758,000 for evading the luxury tax payable on such an item.

In spite of having all they needed in terms of possessions and social life, it was not all glitz and glamour for the sisters. Jenny was unhappily married three times and then in 1933 was involved in an automobile accident in Bordeaux, which left the devastated actress with a disfigured face. Not only that but she also suffered a punctured lung, fractured ribs and damage to her limbs, which sadly made it impossible for her to dance. In just one moment her entire life had changed; not only had she lost her stunning good looks but her career was tragically over. Jenny was inconsolable.

In unbelievable pain, the woman suffered for the next eight years, enduring plastic surgery to rebuild her once-beautiful face and having to sell her extensive jewellery collection to pay for treatment. By 1941, Jenny knew she could not go on that way, and her health started to become of great concern to just about everybody in her life.

Separated from her third husband, attorney Bernard Vinisky, Jenny moved into the Shelton Apartments with her two adopted daughters, Clarika and Manzie. There she tried to make things work, but everybody could see just how quickly the former dancer was sinking, particularly on one occasion just days before her death, when Jenny broke down in such a way that her panicked daughter called for a doctor. He came to the apartment, and after examining his patient, turned to the daughter to break the news that Jenny was most certainly on her way to a nervous breakdown. He prescribed her a sedative to help her cope and went on his way.

On 1 May 1941, Jenny had a plan to end her days of pain and distress. She waited for her daughters to go out for the day and then telephoned her brother-in-law (Rosie’s husband), and then her aunt, Frieda Bakos, in order to complain that she felt unwell. On numerous occasions during the years, Jenny had told her aunt that doctors had not done her any favours by saving her life after the car crash. It would seem that on 1 May 1941, Jenny was ready to take back control and end it herself.

After speaking with her niece, Frieda Bakos was so concerned about Jenny’s state of mind that she decided to rush round to the apartment with her daughter, Stephanie. Unfortunately, before they arrived, Jenny had prepared a sash strong enough to support her weight, tied it around her neck and proceeded to hang herself from an iron curtain rod next to her apartment window.

When Frieda and Stephanie finally arrived at the building, they rushed up to her floor and were shocked to hear Jenny’s dog crying inside. Knocking loudly at the door and trying to open it themselves, the pair tried desperately to get Jenny’s attention but it was no good, so they rushed to fetch the manager who was able to open the door with his pass key. The three people stumbled into the apartment to be met by a distressing sight: there hung the body of the once beautiful Jenny Dolly. She had been dead for just a few minutes and did not leave a note.

Jenny’s funeral was held in the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather in Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Her estranged husband was too ill to travel from Chicago where he was living, though seventy-five other friends and family gathered round to say their last goodbyes. Her sister Rosie wore a heavy veil and almost collapsed in the chapel, while friends such as theatre luminaries Fanny Brice and Gracie Allen wept as Jenny’s coffin was carried into the chapel, covered in pink roses and a sprinkling of lilies of the valley.