BELOVED OF THE GODS

Evening Star, Issue 22516, 8 December 1936, Page 12

BELOVED OF THE GODS

HOLLYWOOD STARS WHO DIED YOUNG Those whom the Hollywood gods love die young! writes Sheilar Graham. . Irving Thalberg was only 37 when he died. The acknowledged genius among producers, he was respected by all who understood his efforts to raise the level of picture entertainment. He was admired for his courage, loved for his sympathy, tolerance, and understanding, blessed with a wife in Norma Shearer, who adored him, and with two children for whom he had great and wonderful plans. But Death struck at him through the very qualities which made his fame possible. Tenacity, enthusiasm, and a tremendous capacity for work burned up his resistance to illness, _so that an ordinary cold resulted in pneumonia and death. The Hollywood death register of Fortune’s darlings who departed this world under the age of 40 includes John Gilbert, Thelma Todd, Rudolph Valentino, Dorothy Dell, Lilyan Tashman, Barbara La Marr, Renee Adoree, Juno Mathis, Mabel Normand, and Wallace Reid. Gilbert, beloved of Greta Garbo, was 38 when a heart attack last January removed him from the Hollywood scene. He. died a bitter man, disillusioned with Dame Fortune, who had _ given him so much—and so little—in his brief span of life. Money, fame, obscurity, adulation, two children, four beautiful wives—a little-known “ extra ” girl, Olive Burrell; Beatrice Joy, whom he ' -married in 1923 and from whom he was divorced in 1924; stage actress Ina Claire, and Virginia Bruce, both of whom divorced him after brief matrimonial episodes. Thelma Todd preceded Gilbert to the grave by little more than three weeks. The blonde comedy actress was 30 when she was discovered asphyxiated at the wheel of her car in the garage of her Santa Monica home. After years of playing small-featured roles, the former Massachusetts school teacher came into her own shortly before her death as an excellent comedy foil to Patsy Kelly in Hal Roach comedies. Now all that remains of her memory is her name above a restaurant which she owned, fronting Santa Monica Beach.

Poor little Dorothy Dell was only 19 when a motor car of a Pasadena surgeon careered against several trees, turned over, and killed her in June, 1934. After winning the title “ Miss Universe, 1930,” and appearing in several New York musicals, she marked time in Hollywood for a few months until Fortune smiled on her work in ‘ Wharf Angel’ and ‘ Little Miss Marker.’ Had she lived there is. little doubt that Miss Dell would have carved her name in sizable letters on the chart of screen fame. Rudolph Valentino, the “ perfect screen lover,” often expressed the wish to die young. He was 31, at the height of his screen popularity, when he suffered a relapse from a serious illness due to pleurisy in his left lung. Peritonitis proved fatal. The Italian-born “ dream lover’s ” first theatrical job in the United States was dancing in a musical comedy at a salary of 75d0l June Mathis, first feminine director, who discovered Valentino playing a “ heavy ” in a minor picture and cast him for the part of Julio in ‘ The Four Horsemen or the Apocalypse,’ died 11 months after the demise of her “ discovery,” when she was 33. Miss Mathis blazed a path for women in the production and business side ,of motion pictures and was the highest paid woman in her sphere. After her death in the 48th Street Theatre, New York, she was placed to rest in the same cemetery as her protege Valentino. Lilyan Tashman, the screen’s bestdressed woman,” and wife of Edmund Lowe, was 34 when death removed her from the bright light life she' loved. She was buried in her favourite blue gown. Thirty-year-old Barbara La Marr, who died as an aftermath of over-diet-ing in January, 1926, was known as the “ too beautiful girl.” She rose from working as an “ extra ” as lOdol a day to a salary of 2,000d0l a week in the Douglas Fairbanks him ‘ The Nut.’ Before illness cut short her career she was awarded a contract that gave her 1,000,000d0l to make four pictures. , ~ Renee Adoree was 34 when death ended her Hollywood career in December, 1933. She reached the pinnacle of her success with the late John Gilbert in ‘ The Big Parade.’ Karl Dane, in the same picture, committed suicide in 1934. - , ~ , i vr j Wallace Reid and Mabel Normand were household names to cinema-goers during and after the World War. They both died before chalking up the life score of 40. Reid was 31 when he died in 1923. Miss Normand was 36 when she succumbed in 1930 after a threeyear struggle to regain lost health. Over 40, but still' comparatively young when death interrupted their careers in motion pictures were Miss Normand’s 47-year-old actor-director husband, Lew Qpdy; Will Rogers 56, killed last year in Alaska in a plane crash with Wiley Post; Paul Bern, who was 42 when in 1932 he committed suicide, two months after his marriage to Jean Harlow; Lowell Sherman, who died suddenly in 1934 at 49; and Lon Chaney, “ the man of a thousand faces, 1,1 two years younger, who departed this life August, 1930.