Eerie premonitions, a freak house fire, and countless car crashes. No matter how charmed
the lives of these stars of Old Hollywood looked on the outside, they each met a heartbreaking end.
Judy Garland first captivated the hearts of audiences everywhere thanks to her
film collaborations with Mickey Rooney. In 1939,
it was her turn as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz that first made her an icon.
"I'm Dorothy Gale. From Kansas."
She would go on to star in classics like Meet Me in St. Louis, A Star Is Born,
and Easter Parade, her brassy voice an iconic part of Old Hollywood.
But Garland had a lifelong struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction.
The studio had her on pills to lose weight by the time she was a teenager,
and she dealt with the fallout for the rest of her life. Garland told biographer Paul Donnelley,
"They'd give us pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they'd
take us to the studio hospital and knock us out with sleeping pills. [...] Then after
four hours they'd wake us up and give us the pep pills again so we could work 72 hours in
a row. Half of the time we were hanging from the ceiling but it was a way of life for us."
In 1969, she passed away from a drug overdose. According to The Guardian,
the coroner's report read,
"This is quite clearly an accidental circumstance to
a person who was accustomed to taking barbiturates over a very long time."
On the evening of September 30, 1955, the Porsche driven by up-and-coming actor James Dean
collided with a Ford sedan headed in the opposite direction. The actor, who was only 24, was killed
in the crash. At the time, few people actually knew who James Dean was. His only released movie
to date was Elia Kazan's adaptation of East of Eden. While the film was a hit, audiences were
only just starting to learn about the man who would become the legendary Hollywood rebel.
"You're tearing me apart!"
His most iconic film, Rebel Without a Cause,
was released a month after his death. And his final role, in Giant, came out a year
later. He picked up posthumous Oscar nominations for his last two films.
Dean had been making a name for himself in Hollywood thanks to
his difficult on-set behavior and his love of sports cars.
"Take it easy driving. The life you might save might be mine."
He purchased the Porsche Spyder he would die in shortly before his death,
and even received a warning about the car being dangerous. While having dinner with future Star
Wars star Alec Guinness, the veteran actor had a premonition. He recalled years later that,
"Some strange thing came over me. I said, 'Please do not get into that car,
because if you do [...] if you get into this car at all, it's now Thursday [...] 10:00 at
night [...] and by 10:00 at night next Thursday, you'll be dead.'"
"And he was dead the following Thursday afternoon."
1930s star Jean Harlow was the original blonde bombshell. She
starred in classics like Hell's Angels and, fittingly, Platinum Blonde.
"You know, my skin's terribly delicate, and I don't dare expose it."
When she became famous, housewives across America rushed out to buy
peroxide in order to color their hair like hers. People even founded "Platinum
Blonde Clubs" around the country to celebrate the hot new trend.
"Your hair is like a field of silver daisies. I'd like to run barefoot through your hair."
Harlow was considered one of the first on-screen sex goddesses. And frequent
co-star Clark Gable was a friend and admirer. He told Hollywood Magazine,
"Probably this outburst puts me in the class of her fans. I am. And I think
you'll find that everyone who really knows Jean feels just the same way."
Unfortunately, two years after Gable's interview, Harlow's health declined rapidly. She received
multiple blood transfusions and was put in an oxygen tent, but she didn't survive. Her
official cause of death was "uremic poisoning," which we now call kidney failure. She was 26.
In the years since, many have wondered whether Harlow's infamous hair may have
been responsible. She used actual bleach on her head and may have spent years inhaling
poisonous gasses that affect the kidneys. But she'd also had health
problems since she was a teenager, so at this point, it's hard to say.
Jayne Mansfield, buxom star of films like The Girl Can't Help It,
marketed herself as an even-more-sexualized Marilyn Monroe, and she refused to apologize.
"Man, man oh man, oh Mansfield. Jayne Mansfield, that is."
She told journalist Lawrence Quirk,
"I am merely influenced by Marilyn! Artists in all fields have original influences,
then they go on to put their own individual stamp on what they are offering their public!"
Her counterpart apparently hated her. Marilyn told Quirk,
"All she does is imitate me — but her imitations are an insult to her as well
as to myself. I know it's supposed to be flattering to be imitated,
but she does it so grossly, so vulgarly – I wish I had some legal means to sue her."
Like Monroe, Mansfield reportedly also had an affair with John F. Kennedy,
explicitly because the Some Like It Hot star did first. When Monroe was found dead,
Mansfield worried she would be killed too.
Jayne Mansfield did die young. She was killed in a car crash several years after Monroe's death,
when the car she was in smashed into the back of a tractor-trailer,
shearing off its top. The horrific accident caused changes in truck design. Crash bars
on the backs of tractor-trailers are still known as Mansfield bars.
Mansfield's 3-year-old daughter, Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay,
was in the car at the time of her death: She told People,
"Someone once said about [remembering] my mother:
'All you have to do is look in the mirror.' She's with me still."
Linda Darnell was known as "the girl with the perfect face." She
was discovered in Dallas at the age of 14 and sent to Hollywood for screen tests,
where she was told that she needed to wait a few years.
"In a year or so, you'll be better equipped. Go back home. Attend a
good dramatic school. Learn something about life."
By 19, she was a star. Esquire quoted her saying,
"Before I came to Hollywood, I dreamed that movie people led lives of ease and luxury,
that their wants were filled before they could mention them, and that life was simply a smooth
succession of pleasures. What did I find? [...] I've never worked so hard in my life."
She worked throughout the '40s and '50s, starring in classic film noirs like Fallen Angel and No Way
Out as well as B-movies like Island of Desire, opposite a young Tab Hunter. In his memoir,
Tab Hunter Confidential, he recalled being nervous about kissing her on camera.
"SOS. Hello, Hawaii. Hello, America. Hello, England. Hello, anybody!"
According to Hunter, Darnell replied,
"Relax. I'm good luck for newcomers."
Unfortunately, Darnell's luck ran out. In 1965, she was watching one of her old films
on television while smoking. As she dozed off, her cigarette sparked a fire that engulfed the
house. Darnell was taken to the hospital with severe burns. She passed away several days later.
Her last interview, published posthumously in The National Enquirer, is chilling. She'd said,
"I hope my life won't end in tragedy."
Montgomery Clift starred in classic films like Red River and From Here to Eternity.
He was renowned for his acting as well as what one biographer called "a face of impenetrable beauty."
Clift was friends with Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he'd worked several times. In 1956,
Clift was leaving a party at Taylor's house when he drifted off the road
and crashed into a telephone pole. Taylor raced to the scene, where she crawled into
the wreckage and pulled Clift to safety. He was in the hospital for three months.
Thus began what Robert Lewis, Clift's acting coach called
"The longest suicide in Hollywood history."
The actor spent the following decade dealing with alcoholism and an addiction to painkillers.
"I couldn't help myself. I couldn't."
Taylor stayed friends with him through his rough patches, and used her clout
to get him roles in Raintree County and Suddenly Last Summer with her.
"There are times when she's carrying the scene, and he's doing nothing but standing there,
you know, and saying, 'Mm-hm. Mm-hm. And then what?' You know. And he was loaded."
Montgomery Clift passed away due to a heart attack in 1966, at only 45 years old.
Veronica Lake was the enchanting star of films like Sullivan's Travels and I Married a Witch.
She was called "the Peek-a-boo blonde" because of her iconic hairstyle with one curl that hung
over her right eye. The look was extremely popular among teen girls and young women.
The style was such a big deal, in fact, that it was a matter of national security.
"Before the war, Veronica Lake's one-eyed hairdo
established a style that swept the feminine face of the country."
During World War II, the government recruited Lake to change her 'do. She made a Public
Service Announcement about less dangerous ways to style one's hair while working in factories,
which many women did in place of the men who were away fighting.
Unfortunately, Lake's fame went into steep decline. She did sporadic television work in
the early '50s and occasionally returned to the screen over the following few decades. By the
time she passed away in 1973 from hepatitis, she was working as a cocktail waitress.
Several years earlier, trying to promote an autobiography, she'd told an interviewer,
"I'm out of it now — well out of it. I knew back
then that I wasn't cut out for all the con that goes along with working here."
According to Today, Lake was cremated and her ashes were scattered. But decades later,
they were rediscovered in an antiques shop in New
York. The town held lookalike contests in Lake's honor, making her famous once more.
In the early 1900s, a young woman named Peg Entwistle moved to the United States
with her father to get into acting. She soon found success onstage. She was so talented,
in fact, that she inspired another young girl to follow in her footsteps. According to the
biography The Girl Who Walked Home Alone, after Bette Davis saw Entwistle perform
onstage in a production of The Wild Duck in Boston, she told her mother,
"I am going to be an actress just like Peg Entwistle."
She enjoyed a thriving theatrical career, but she wanted to get into
movies, so she moved to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, her fame didn't follow,
and she struggled to book roles. A little more than a year after she arrived in Hollywood,
she told the uncle she was staying with that she was going out to meet a friend. Instead,
the police soon received a call from a hiker. The anonymous caller said,
"Near the Hollywoodland sign I found a woman's shoe, jacket,
and purse. In the purse I found a suicide note. I looked down the mountain and saw a body."
Peg Entwistle had climbed to the top of the H in the Hollywood sign and had leapt to her death.
Her death serves as a symbol for all the lost
souls who come to Hollywood for fame but find only pain.
Marilyn Monroe, the iconic star of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot,
died at 36 of an overdose of barbituates. She was found in bed with a telephone in one hand,
suggesting she might have been about to call for help. But the LAPD concluded her death was,
quote, "caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is
probable suicide." Monroe suffered from depression and had spent much of her last year at home.
"I think you're the saddest girl I ever met."
"You're the first man that ever said that."
There are numerous conspiracy theories surrounding her death. One such theory
is that she may have been murdered because of her alleged affair with John F. Kennedy.
Netflix documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes suggested as much.
In an interview with a senior FBI agent named Jim Doyle, he recounts,
"[The FBI] came on the scene immediately. Before anybody
even realized what happened. It had to be instructions from someone high up,
higher than [former FBI director J Edgar Hoover]. The [attorney] general or the president."
While none of that is substantiated, Monroe's obituary in the Los Angeles
Times included interviews with a number of friends who didn't believe she would
have intentionally ended her life. Her friend and publicist Pat Newcomb said,
"This must have been an accident. Marilyn was in perfect physical condition and was
feeling great. We had made plans for today. We were going to the movies this afternoon."
Ramon Novarro was born in Mexico in 1899, according to TCM. Known as "the Latin
Lover" onscreen, the silent film star became a sensation shortly after the shocking death
of Rudolph Valentino. He starred in films like Mata Hari and the original version of Ben-Hur:
A Tale of the Christ. In addition to being a sex symbol, Novarro was also a well-respected actor.
His co-star Alice Terry told Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro author André Soares,
"Ramon would attempt anything — comedy, drama, crazy scenes,
anything, and he could do it. I always thought he was capable of doing better
than almost anyone possibly besides [John] Barrymore, who I think had the same thing."
By 1967, his star had faded, and he was making mostly one-off television
appearances. He remarked to the Associated Press,
"It is too bad there is no glamor left in [the movies] any more.
They're not trying in the studios anymore; everything is in too much of a hurry."
In his personal life, Novarro was gay and in the closet throughout his career. On the
day before Halloween in 1968, according to Out, two brothers named Paul and Tom
Ferguson went over Novarro's house for sex. By the time they left,
after ransacking the building for money that the silent film star was rumored to have hidden,
Novarro was dead. He had been beaten with what police later said was a silver-tipped cane.
Rock Hudson was once one of Hollywood's hunkiest leading men. He was the star of
massive movie hits like Giant and All That Heaven Allows. But Hudson had a secret: he
was gay. According to Vanity Fair, Hudson was in an arranged marriage with his agent's secretary.
Hudson was diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s and was the first celebrity to go public.
"Mr. Rock Hudson has Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome."
Ronald Reagan had thus far refused to say "AIDS," according to Smithsonian Magazine,
and though Hudson was friends with First Lady Nancy Reagan, she declined his request for help
getting treatment in France. Instead, Hudson focused on getting the word out.
According to the LA Times, he released a statement for an AIDS fundraiser reading,
"I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that I have AIDS. But if that is helping others,
I can, at least, know that my own misfortune has had some positive worth."
Hudson was friends with Elizabeth Taylor for decades,
ever since they starred in Giant, and she visited him in the hospital.
"She said, 'I love him and he is tragically gone. Please, God, do not let him die in vain."
His death inspired Taylor to co-found amFAR,
and she was an AIDS activist until her own passing, decades later.
"Look at how many you are. In just two short weeks,
there will be as many new infections as there are people here tonight."
Randy Shilts wrote in And The Band Played On that Hudson going public brought immeasurable
attention to an epidemic that was being ignored. Shilts summed up Hudson's influence, writing,
"There was AIDS before Rock Hudson and there was AIDS after."
Natalie Wood was the rare child star who grew up to be a well-respected
adult actor. She starred in West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause,
Miracle on 34th Street, and many other classics. Wood received Oscar
nominations for Rebel as well as Splendor in the Grass and Love with the Proper Stranger.
In what seems in retrospect like a bad omen, Wood was terrified of water her entire life,
stemming from an incident where she was forced to film in water, presumably on the 1952 film
The Star. In an interview with Hollywood columnist Shirley Eder, Wood recalled,
"I was terrified. I was petrified, because we were in the open ocean."
According to her sister Lana in an interview with TMZ,
Natalie's mother also prophesied that she would "die in dark water."
Wood did, indeed, die in the water. She drowned at the age of 43 off the coast of Catalina Island
in what many have since called mysterious circumstances. Questions have persisted as
to whether her drowning was accidental or whether her husband Robert Wagner and guest
Christopher Walken may have had something to do with her death. The case was still being actively
investigated as late as 2020, with investigators saying they wanted to speak to Wagner once more.
"The statute of limitations has run on all crimes except for murder."
Suzanne Finstad wrote in her book, Natalie Wood: The Complete Biography,
"Natalie Wood's drowning was not an accident."
Intentional or otherwise, the death of Natalie Wood remains heartbreaking.
All three young stars of Rebel Without a Cause died too young, including Sal Mineo,
who played Plato in the film. The role garnered him an Oscar nomination at only
16 years old. He would go on to be nominated again five years later for his work in Exodus,
opposite Paul Newman. In a remarkably candid 1972 interview with writer Boze Hadleigh,
Mineo discussed his Rebel character and how he identified with the part,
given that he too wasn't straight — a big thing for an actor to admit in the '70s. Mineo admitted,
"He was, in a way, the first gay teenager in films. You watch it now,
you know he had the hots for James Dean."
"Is he a friend of yours?"
Yeah. Yeah, he's my best friend."
In 1976, at only 37 years old, Mineo was murdered outside his West Hollywood
apartment. The police speculated that his sexuality had something to do with the murder,
and that he may have been killed by a hookup. Crime writer James Ellroy's reconstruction of
the investigation for The Hollywood Reporter shows the cops chasing down leads relating to
Mineo's time spent at local gay bars. However, it turned out to have been a random murder,
a robbery gone wrong. The New York Times reported when Lionel Williams,
a pizza deliveryman, was sentenced to at least 50 years in jail for
Mineo's murder as well as a string of local robberies. At the sentencing, the judge said,
"The defendant should be committed to state prison for as long as the law allows."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please dial or text 988 to speak with
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also seek help by visiting 988lifeline.org