DIVE TO DEATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

DIVE TO DEATH.

HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE.

ENGLISH GIRL'S END

DEEMED HERSELF A FAILURE.

One of the most spectacular tragedies in the recent history o£ Hollywood occurred when Miss Peg Entwistle, a 24-year-old English-born actress, who deemed herself a failure in films, plunged to death from the top of an electric sign. On the hills outside Hollywood film colony stands a gigantic illuminated advertisement, which bears, in letters 50ft high, the name "Hollywoodland." It is the most powerful "spotlight" on the Pacific coast. With the help of a workman's ladder, Miss Entwistle climbed to the top of the letter "H" and jumped. Her body rolled more than 100 ft do\vn the mountain side. Near it was found her handbag, containing a small amount of money and a note reading: "I am afraid lam a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this long ago it would have saved a lot of pain." Whirlwind Courtship. Miss Entwistle. who went to the United States as a child with her parents, both of them from the English stage, was married after a whirlwind courtship of four days to Mr. Robert Lee Keith, an English actor; She divorced him in 1929, alleging cruelty. Though then only 21, she had already achieved notable success as a piember of the Repertory Company of the Theatre Guild. She was one of the leading players in a production of Mr. Bernard Shaw's "Getting Married," and late last winter supported Miss Laur.etta Taylor in "Alice Sit by the Fire." Then Miss Entwistle went to Hollywood, and—like so many others —she could not wait for success. She was engaged to star with Miss Billie Burke in "The Mad Hope," but the picture failed to attract favourable attention and had only a brief run. Miss Entwistle secured small parts here and there, and finally was given a: leading place in "Thirteen Women," an occult

play based on Tiffany Thayer's story of thirteen girls who first meet in a fashionable finishing school. One of the girls, ostracised by the others, vows to be revenged. The girls grow up. Some of them marry, some take lovers. Their despised schoolmate becomes associated with a Hindu. She sends word to each of the others that they are destined to die at a certain time in a certain manner.

What she predicts begins to happen. One woman commits suicide, another murders her husband and is sentenced to bo executed, a. third is killed by her husband.

Mies Entwistle's part was that of the second woman to die. Undoubtedly, it is

thought, her mind was affected by the weird occultism of the play, but it was even more affected by the decision of the producers to shelve the play after it had been completed.