famous Hollywood deaths – IAMNOTASTALKER

October 31, 2014September 29, 2017

The Knickerbocker Hotel

I don’t think there is any property in Los Angeles, perhaps the world, that has seen as much glamour and as much tragedy as the former Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. Today, the Renaissance Revival/Beau Arts-style structure, which was once dubbed “The Hotel to the Stars,” serves as a retirement home. And oh, if those walls could talk!

[ad]

The Knickerbocker was constructed from 1923 to 1925 and was designed by architect E.M. Frasier. The 11-story property was the definition of grandeur, featuring wood-beamed ceilings, arched entryways, marble flooring, stained glass and antique furnishings. You can see what the hotel looked like in its early years here. The Knickerbocker became an instant hit with celebrities of the day, including Gloria Swanson, Mickey Rooney, John Wayne, Gene Autry, Rudolph Valentino, Roy Rogers, Bette Davis, Dick Powell, Errol Flynn, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner, Mae West, Laurel & Hardy, and Cecil B. DeMille. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio even honeymooned there after their January 1954 wedding in San Francisco.

In 1955, the property changed hands and underwent an extensive renovation, during which the vast majority of its beautiful detailing was, sadly, removed. While still an upscale destination for travelers, the hotel had become a shadow of its former self.

As Hollywood began to get seedy in the 1960s, The Knickerbocker suffered a decline in patronage. In 1963, it changed hands once again and quickly became a haven for the homeless and drug-addled. At some point, the hotel went into bankruptcy receivership and was eventually purchased in 1972 by the real estate development firm of Goldrich, Kest, Hirsch and Stern, who turned the site into housing for senior citizens. It remains retirement housing to this day.

The Knickerbocker has long been reported as being haunted, which is no surprise considering the many macabre events that have taken place there over the years. In January 1943, police famously dragged actress Frances Farmer, kicking and screaming, from the hotel lobby for failing to pay a fine on a recent drunk driving arrest. Thing only got worse the following morning at her hearing. An out-of-sorts Frances knocked down a policeman, threw an inkwell at the judge and wound up being dragged away, kicking and screaming once again – this time to the psychiatric ward of L.A. General Hospital. Shortly thereafter she was transferred to Kimball Sanitarium in La Crescenta to begin what was the first of many asylum stays during the actress’ tragic lifetime.

On July 23rd, 1948, famed director D.W. Griffith, who was a long time resident of the Knickerbocker, collapsed of a cerebral hemorrhage in the hotel lobby. He passed away a few minutes later in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

And yes, there’s more. On November 15th, 1962, MGM costume designer Irene Lutz downed several bottles of alcohol and then jumped to her death from her 11th floor room at the Knickerbocker.

Still more. On March 3rd, 1966, William Frawley, who was best known as I Love Lucy’s Fred Mertz, was walking by the Knickerbocker when he suffered a heart attack. His nurse dragged him into the hotel, where he passed away a few minutes later.

And finally, on the night of Halloween 1936, Harry Houdini’s widow, Bess, conducted a tenth and final séance, in an attempt to make contact with the former magician, on the rooftop of the Knickerbocker.

The Knickerbocker is also a filming location! The building was seen in the background of the 1950 movie 711 Ocean Drive.

In 1954, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were bombarded for a surprise taping of This Is Your Life in Room 205 of the hotel.

You can watch that episode by clicking below.

And while many websites state that The Knickerbocker was where Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) and Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) initially met up to conduct their affair in The Graduate, that information is incorrect. The couple actually met up at The Palm Bar inside of the now defunct Ambassador Hotel.

You can watch a Mysteries & Scandals episode about The Knickerbocker by clicking below.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

I hope all of my fellow stalkers have a safe and fun Halloween! Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Knickerbocker Hotel is located at 1714 N. Ivar Avenue in Hollywood.

October 29, 2014September 29, 2017

The Silent Movie Theatre

I am very excited to announce that I recently started writing for the L.A. Tourism & Convention Board website, Discover Los Angeles. I have done two posts for the site so far – one on iconic horror movie locations and another about area hotels that have been immortalized onscreen. Before I was given my first assignment, my editor emailed me a few articles to use as examples, one of which was written by my buddy Scott Michaels, of the Find a Death website. The 2013 column, titled The 13 Scariest Places in Los Angeles, had me practically foaming at the mouth. The vast majority of locations mentioned I had never even heard of before, let alone stalked, and one in particular had me especially intrigued – the Silent Movie Theatre in Beverly Grove, where owner Lawrence Austin was shot to death in 1997.

[ad]

The Silent Movie Theatre was originally constructed in 1942 for silent film buff John Hampton and his wife, Dorothy. John, an Oklahoma native, had collected silent movie reels and showcased them at his home from the time that he was a young boy. In 1940, the couple headed west and settled in Los Angeles. The following year, they purchased a vacant plot of land and commissioned a small, two-story silent movie theatre to be built on the premises. The upstairs floor served as their apartment.

The theatre opened for business in February 1942. By that time, silent movies were a thing of the past and John wanted to pay homage to the almost-forgotten genre. You can check out what the property looked like in its early days here. According to the Dead History Project website, a 1943 Los Angeles Times article described the 250-seat movie house as having “staggered seating,” a “bowl-shaped floor,” and “acoustical sound.” The theatre proved extremely popular and such celebrities as Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith were even known to stop by from time to time to catch viewings of their early films.

John had long been in the habit of restoring and redeveloping old films in his bathroom. The Dead History Project states, “Mr. Hampton transformed his bathtub into a film lab, dyeing and redeveloping old, nitrate film. His Phantom of the Opera, probably the best version of the original in existence, took acquiring eight separate prints over five years. Then, for over two months, he rebuilt the film – spliced the best parts of each print into a single version and meticulously dyed the frames to make sure they matched.” Sadly, in 1980, the harsh chemicals used in the process caught up with John and he developed cancer. He closed the theatre during his long battle with the disease and eventually passed away in 1990. A friend of John and Dorothy’s named Lawrence Austin purchased the theatre shortly thereafter and and renovated the space. He also changed the wording on the marquee from “Old Time Movies” to “Silent Movie.” The space re-opened for business on January 18th, 1991. You can check out a photo of what the property looked like after Austin took over here.

During the renovation process, Austin had hired a man named James Van Sickle to paint the Silent Movie Theatre. Despite a forty-year age difference (Austin was 67, Van Sickle was 27), the two hit it off romantically. Van Sickle eventually moved into the upstairs apartment with Lawrence and began working as the theatre’s projectionist.

On the evening of January 17th, 1997, the theatre was set to air a showing of Sunrise, proceeded by two short films. During one of the shorts, an audience member left the theatre and headed to the lobby, where Austin was standing behind the candy counter with Mary Giles, a concessions clerk. The man pulled out a .357 and first demanded that Lawrence hand over the money in the cash register. After he complied, the man shot him in the face. Lawrence died immediately. He was 74. The man then shot Mary twice in the chest, before turning back to Austin and shooting him two more times. Thankfully, Giles survived and was able to describe the shooter to the police, which eventually led them to a 19-year-old named Christian Rodriguez. It did not take long for Rodriguez to cave and inform detectives that he had been hired for $30,000 to kill both Austin and Giles and make the scenario look like a robbery. The person behind the scheme? None other than James Van Sickle, whom Austin had just recently named his beneficiary. Van Sickle was set to inherit the Silent Movie Theatre and over a million dollars in cash. Both James and Christian were eventually convicted of murder and are currently serving life sentences.

After the murder, the Silent Movie Theatre was put up for sale. A man named Charlie Lustman happened to pass by the property in 1999 and became intrigued. Though he knew nothing about silent films, he decided to purchase the theatre at a cost of $1.3 million. He remodeled the space and added a new marquee. The cinema re-opened its doors on November 5th, 1999. Besides showcasing films, Lustman also offered the theatre for special events. It proved to be a popular venue. In 2006, after falling ill, Charlie sold the property to Dan and Sammy Harkham. The brothers then formed Cinefamily, a “nonprofit organization of movie lovers devoted to finding and presenting interesting and unusual programs of exceptional, distinctive, weird and wonderful films.” The group currently showcases about 14 films a week at the Silent Movie Theatre. Last year, over 50,000 people attended screenings on the premises, none of whom were scared off by the ghosts of John Hampton and Lawrence Austin, who have been known to regularly haunt the historic venue.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Silent Movie Theatre is located at 611 North Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles’ Beverly Grove neighborhood. You can visit the official Cinefamily website here.

October 22, 2013September 29, 2017

Henry Kyle’s Former House

Many, many months back, my mom texted me to ask if I had ever stalked the Bel-Air mansion where Texas tycoon Henry Harrison Kyle was murdered on July 22nd, 1983. Because the property had also once been the residence of filmdom’s first “It Girl,” Clara Bow, my mom thought it would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood posts. That was the first that I had ever heard of the place and, of course, started chomping at the bit to stalk it, so I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to do just that a short time later.

[ad]

According to a June 1996 The New York Times article, legend has it that the 1923 manse was originally built for the then King of Spain. Sometime during the early 1930s, the pad was purchased by film producer Louis Lewyn and his wife, Marion Mack. The couple loaned the residence to actress Clara Bow to live in shortly thereafter and the starlet remained there for the next couple of years.

For those not familiar with Old Hollywood lore, the Brooklyn-born Bow became a silver screen phenomenon thanks to a starring role in the 1927 silent film It. The flick was based upon a magazine article penned by British novelist Elinor Glyn, who explained the elusive trait as such, “’It’ is that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With ‘It’ you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man.” From 1927 on, Clara, who starred in over 58 films during her lifetime, would forever be known as “The It Girl.” The phrase caught on and is still used regularly in Hollywood to this day. Sadly, Bow’s heavy Brooklyn accent interfered with her career during the advance of “talkies” in the mid 1930s. The beauty retired from acting in 1935 at the age of 28 and moved to Nevada. She spent the remainder of her years hidden from the public eye and passed away from a heart attack at the age of 60 on September 27th, 1965.

Multimillionaire Henry Kyle, who amassed his fortune via extensive real estate, coal mine, bank, and oil-drilling equipment firm holdings, relocated from Dallas to Bel-Air in the Spring of 1983, along with his two sons, 20-year-old Henry Harrison Kyle II, aka “Ricky,” and 19-year-old Scott, in order to begin a new job as the head of Four Star International Inc. television production company. At the time of his arrival, he purchased Bow’s former Mediterranean-style manse. He did not live there long. In the pre-dawn hours of July 22nd, 1983, Ricky woke his father up and informed him that there was a prowler in the house. Henry grabbed a gun and walked downstairs to the dining room, where Ricky, who also had a gun, subsequently shot him in the back at point-blank range. Henry returned fire, hitting his son in the arm. It was too late, though. When police arrived later that morning, they discovered Henry’s 6’4” nude body sprawled on the dining room floor. The Texan, who was often described as a real-life J.R. Ewing, was dead at the age of 60. (Ironically enough, according to a 1983 The Pittsburg Press article, upon moving, Kyle rented out his Texas residence to none other than Larry Hagman, who was in the Lone Star State to film Dallas. Hagman subsequently vacated the property shortly after Henry was killed.)

Ricky was arrested five weeks later. Foreshadowing the eerily similar Menendez murders in 1989, Ricky originally said that an intruder had killed the senior Kyle and that he had been shot in the crossfire, but then later copped to the crime saying that his father, who had supposedly been abusing him both physically and emotionally for years, had fired at him and that Ricky had fired back strictly in self defense. Prosecutors contended that Ricky, who was a frequent drug abuser, killed his father to gain access to his vast inheritance. The first trial resulted in a hung jury. In the second trial, Ricky was convicted of involuntary manslaughter (huh?), sentenced to five years in prison, and subsequently served three. Who says our justice system doesn’t work?

Kyle’s former manse was last sold in August 2011 for $6.375 million. According to the real estate listing, the abode boasts 6 bedrooms, 7.5 baths, 8,900 square feet of living space, a chef’s kitchen, a formal dining room, a master suite with two bathrooms, an enclosed sleeping porch, a ballroom, a rooftop deck, a 0.70-acre plot of land, a pool, a sundeck, a motor court, a 3-car garage, and a newly-built detached guest house. The entire property encompasses a total of 9,450 square feet. Unfortunately, as you can see below, virtually none of it is visible from the street.

But, as I’ve said before, that’s why God created real estate listings, which is where I got the photographs pictured below.

As you can see, the interior of the residence is really quite spectacular. You can check out some more interior pics of the pad here.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Henry Kyle’s former house is located at 110 Stone Canyon Road in Bel-Air.

October 18, 2013September 29, 2017

Karyn Kupcinet’s Former Apartment

Back in June, while reading Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s fabulous book Killing Kennedy, I was reminded of an unsolved death tied to the former president that took place in November 1963 in West Hollywood – the murder of 22-year-old actress Karyn Kupcinet in her Monterey Village apartment on North Sweetzer Avenue. Figuring that the place would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood theme, I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter.

[ad]

Karyn Kupcinet was born Roberta Lynn Kupcinet on March 6th, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois. The only daughter of Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet and his wife, Essee, Karyn lived a life of privilege. There were cracks in the surface, though. Essee, a perennial stage-mom, started molding Karyn to be a star from the get-go. The youngster landed her first role at the age of 13. It was around that same time that Essee began encouraging Karyn to take diet pills. (Nice woman.) It was a habit she would continue for the rest of her life. Karyn eventually headed east to New York to try her hand at Broadway. While living in the Big Apple, she underwent several plastic surgery procedures and began abusing prescription drugs. In 1960, she moved to Hollywood (initially to an apartment on Hollywood Boulevard and then to the one at Monterey Village, where fellow stalker E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, tells me Cary Grant and Randolph Scott once lived) and landed her first onscreen appearance in the Jerry Lewis film The Ladies Man. She went on to win more bit roles in The Donna Reed Show, Hawaiian Eye, Perry Mason, and The Wide Country. It was during the filming of The Wide Country that Karyn met and began a relationship with actor Andrew Prine. When Prine broke things off in July 1963, the raven-haired starlet went a little cray and began spying on him and his new girlfriend. She also sent him threatening notes constructed from words and letters that she had cut out of magazines.

On November 27th, Karyn had dinner at the Beverly Hills home of actor Mark Goddard and his wife, Marcia Rogers Goddard, who were close with her parents. After the meal, Karyn returned to her apartment (you can see her exact unit on the Find a Death website here) and was visited by her friends Edward Rubin and Robert Hathaway. Robert was one of Prine’s roommates. (I know, sounds suspect, right?) At some point, Karyn went to sleep in her bedroom and Robert and Edward continued to watch TV. They left about 11:15 p.m., locking the door behind them.

On November 30th, the Goddards, worried that they hadn’t heard from Karyn for several days, went to her place to check on her. They discovered the starlet lying nude on her living room couch, dead. Several prescription bottles were found inside the apartment, as well as an odd note that reportedly read, “I’m no good. I’m not really that pretty. My figure’s fat and will never be the way my mother wants it. I won’t let it be what she wants. . . . What happens to me – or my Andy? Why doesn’t he want me?” And while Mark and Marcia initially assumed that Karyn had overdosed, her passing was officially ruled a homicide. Due to the broken hyoid bone in her throat, the coroner listed the cause of death as strangulation. And here’s where things get really strange.

President Kennedy had been assassinated the week prior and around that same time an AP news story was published stating that on November 22nd, a woman most likely in the Oxnard-Camarillo area had dialed a telephone operator and proclaimed that JFK was about to be shot. Twenty minutes later, he was. While police investigated, the woman was never found. Then, in the 1967 book Forgive my Grief II, author Penn Jones claimed that the caller was Karyn. Irv had ties to several mafia figures including Jack Ruby and Penn believed that Jack had told Irv about the assassination prior to it happening. Irv then told Karen and Karen called not the police, but a random telephone operator. Penn asserts that Karyn was killed by the mob a few days later in retaliation for that phone call. Yeah, sounds pretty far-fetched to me, too.

There are also those who believe that Karyn’s death was the result of a much less sinister occurrence. Prolific crime fiction writer James Ellroy is one of them. In a February 2011 Pittsburg Post-Gazette article, he is quoted as saying, “People love to think something is inherently more dramatic, more secret, crazier, uglier, more vicious and vile. People love the inside scoop and will deny all the facts even when they are hit directly over the head with them. It’s a very, very, very common phenomenon to ascribe more intrigue to a prosaic event than the prosaic event truly demands.” Ellroy maintains that Karyn fell down and hit her neck on a coffee table while “dancing around, bombed out of her mind.” Scott Michaels, of the Find a Death website, disagrees with that assertion, saying, “Another theory held by exactly one individual, writer James Ellroy, is that Karyn was stoned to the gills, danced alone naked in the apartment, fell or hit her neck on an object and fell face down on the couch and died. He bases his theory on the fact that a book on the benefits of naked dancing was found in the apartment and the coroner may have been a drunk prone to mistakes. Thanks for playing Ellroy – we have some lovely parting gifts for all of our contestants . . . “ LOL Whatever the true story may be, Karyn’s death remains unsolved and the L.A.P.D. considers it an open case to this day.

On a side-note – I would like to wish my friend Melissa a big CONGRATULATIONS on her upcoming nuptials! She is getting married tomorrow and is having a movie-themed wedding. The event is even being held in a theatre – a woman after my own heart, I swear! As part of the décor, Melissa and her betrothed re-created several movie posters that are going to be hung on the walls. How incredibly cute is that? Pictured below are a few of their poster re-creations. LOVE IT!

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Karyn Kupcinet’s former apartment is located at 1227 1/2 North Sweetzer Avenue, in the Monterey Village complex, in West Hollywood.

October 15, 2013September 29, 2017

The Spot Where the Black Dahlia’s Body Was Found

One Haunted Hollywood locale that I had wanted to stalk pretty much ever since first moving to Southern California in 2000 was the spot where the dismembered body of Elizabeth Short, aka the “Black Dahlia,” was found on the morning of January 15th, 1947. Over six decades later and the case is still one of the most well-known, talked-about and sinister unsolved murders in the history of the City of Angels. I avoided the location for over thirteen years, though, because, for some reason, I had it in my head that the area was dangerous (which, as it turns out, could not have been further from the truth). But when I saw the site detailed in the The Crime Issue of Los Angeles magazine this past July, I decided that I had to bite the bullet and finally dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there just a few days later.

[ad]

Elizabeth Short was born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts on July 29th, 1924. In 1946, after years spent adrift in the Bay State, as well as Illinois and Florida, Beth, as she liked to be called, headed west to California to make a go of it in Hollywood. Her tenure there, which not much is known about, was not successful or long, and Elizabeth spent most of her time waiting tables and moving from boarding house to boarding house. As I mentioned in my July 2008 post about the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, the wanna-be starlet was last seen by a doorman on January 9th, 1947 as she walked out of the property’s east doors and made her way south down Olive Avenue. Six days later, her naked body, which had been cut in two, was spotted lying face-up in a vacant field by a housewife named Betty Bersinger. At first, Betty thought the lifeless figure was a broken store mannequin. When she realized the form was actually a dead body, she rushed to a nearby residence and called the police.

The responding detectives were shocked at the heinousness of the crime. Elizabeth’s body had been severed at the waist, then thoroughly cleaned and all of her blood drained. There were three-inch gashes on each side of her mouth, one breast was slashed open, rope marks marred her wrists and ankles, and a section of flesh had been removed from her thigh and then inserted into her body. No blood or other evidence was found at the scene, though, leading police to believe that she was killed and mutilated elsewhere. Newspaper reporters helped obtain Short’s fingerprints, which were then sent to the FBI in Washington, D.C., and thanks to an underage drinking arrest in Santa Barbara and an army base mailroom job application, she was identified quickly. When a photograph of the 22-year-old beauty was released to the press, Short became a media sensation. Her exotic nickname – which she was given thanks to her raven-colored hair and penchant for wearing black – only fueled the frenzy.

Upon seeing her picture in the paper, an acquaintance named Robert “Red” Manley came forward saying that, on January 9th, Elizabeth had asked him to take her to the Biltmore to meet her sister from Berkeley, whom she was going to move in with. Walter first helped her check her luggage at a bus station and then drove her to the hotel. He left her in the Biltmore lobby at 6:30 p.m. According to hotel employees, Elizabeth subsequently paced the lobby for several hours before departing. What happened from that time to when her body was found six days later is a mystery. (Walter was initially considered a suspect in the murder, but was absolved after passing a lie detector test.) In a very odd twist, on January 24th, a package was mailed to the Los Angeles Examiner containing several of Short’s belongings, including photographs, her birth certificate , her social security card, and her address book. Gasoline had been used to wipe the package clean of any identifying fingerprints. Then, the following day, Elizabeth’s purse and one high heel were found in a dumpster a few miles from where her body was dropped. According to the TruTV website, the killer later sent 13 letters to the police and the media. And while more than thirty people supposedly confessed to the crime, it was never solved. The case of the Black Dahlia murder remains open to this day.

The vacant lot where Elizabeth’s body was found is now a jarringly normal neighborhood of one-story tract homes. And while there seems to be quite a bit of confusion online as to the exact spot where Short was dropped, according to the coroner’s inquest, the site was 54 feet north of the fire hydrant located in front of 3831 South Norton Avenue.

I counted off 54 feet north from the fire hydrant and wound up at the spot pictured below. Elizabeth’s body was found on the patch of grass behind me, in what is now the front yard of the house located at 3825 South Norton Avenue.

The exact spot, denoted with an orange X in the image below, is situated on private property, which is why I did not pose there. You can check out a picture taken of the crime scene on the day that Elizabeth’s body was discovered as compared with a current photo of the area on Flickr here.

The site is also a filming location. Scott Michaels, of the Find a Death website, took Bridget Marquardt, Holly Madison, and Kendra Wilkinson there – in a purple hearse! – during a private Dearly Departed tour in the Season 2 episode of The Girls Next Door titled “Girls Will Be Ghouls.”

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Elizabeth Short’s, aka the Black Dahlia’s, body was found on South Norton Avenue halfway between West 39th and Coliseum Streets in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles. The exact spot, according to the coroner’s inquest, was 54 feet north and a few feet west of the fire hydrant located in front of the house at 3831 South Norton Avenue, which puts her death site in the northeast corner of the front yard of the house at 3825 South Norton Avenue.

October 11, 2013September 29, 2017

Peg Entwistle’s Former House

Another location that I learned about thanks to the fabulous Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites book, which was penned by fellow stalker E.J. of The Movieland Directory, was the one-time Beachwood Drive home of Peg Entwistle, the tragic blonde actress who only achieved fame after her 1932 suicide, in which she jumped to her death from the Hollywood Sign. And while I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk the residence just a few days after reading about it, I figured it would be the perfect spot to feature in my Haunted Hollywood postings and held off on blogging about it until now.

[ad]

Peg was born Lillian Millicent Entwistle across the pond in London, England in 1908. After her mother passed away suddenly when Entwistle was about eight, she and her father, Robert, packed up and moved to New York in the hopes of starting a new life. While there, Robert remarried and had two sons. Tragically, he was killed about six years later by a hit-and-run driver while walking home from work. Peg’s brothers were then sent to California to live with their uncle, Harold Entwistle, while Peg stayed behind to try her turn at acting. She quickly secured a role in a Broadway production of Hamlet and garnered favorable reviews. It was not long before the petite beauty was acting steadily, earning parts in over ten different Broadway productions. Sadly, most were flops. In 1927, Peg met actor Robert Keith and the two were later married. The union was quickly dissolved, though, when Entwistle discovered that Keith had not only been married previously, but had a son (Family Affairs’ Brian Keith, who also later committed suicide, as did his daughter, Daisy).

In 1931, Peg heard Hollywood calling and moved to the West Coast, originally renting a room at the Hollywood Studio Club. She instantly won a role in the short-lived play The Mad Hopes, which also featured Humphrey Bogart and The Wizard of Oz’s Billie Burke. Stardom was almost within reach shortly thereafter when she landed a part in RKO’s Thirteen Women, but, sadly, when the movie premiered in 1932, it was lambasted by critics and the studio subsequently re-edited it, cutting Peg’s role almost entirely. RKO cancelled her contract just a few weeks later and the actress was forced to move into her uncle’s house at 2428 North Beachwood Drive in Hollywood. Peg then made plans to return to New York and the Great White Way, but, unfortunately, could not come up with the necessary train fare. Times were dire.

On the evening of Friday, September 16th, 1932, Peg informed Harold that she was heading to a local drugstore. Instead, she walked a mile and a half up Beachwood Drive to the Hollywood Sign (which then spelled out “Hollywoodland”), climbed up a maintenance ladder to the top of the 50-foot-tall letter H, and jumped to her death. She was 24. The following morning, her clothing and purse were discovered by a hiker. Inside the purse, was a letter that read, “I am afraid I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E.” (The image below is a screen capture taken from an E! Mysteries & Scandals episode about Entwistle. I am unsure if the letter pictured is Peg’s actual letter or a facsimile.) The hiker gathered the clothes and purse and dropped them on the steps of the Hollywood Police Station anonymously. The next day, detectives located Peg’s remains. Investigators were unable to identify her, so they published the suicide note in the Los Angeles Times in the hopes that someone would recognize the handwriting. Harold did, called the police and later identified the body. Peg was cremated and subsequently interred at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Glendale, Ohio.

Supposedly, a letter from the Beverly Hills Playhouse offering Peg the lead part in a play arrived at Harold’s house shortly following her death. The role? A beautiful woman who commits suicide. I am fairly certain that is just Hollywood lore, though – an anecdote dreamed up to make Peg’s story all the more tragic (especially being that, according to Wikipedia, the Beverly Hills Playhouse was not founded until 1954, over two full decades after Entwistle’s suicide).

Harold’s tiny bungalow, which was originally built in 1913, boasts three bedrooms, one bath, 1,650 square feet of living space, and a 0.16-acre plot of land. The property last sold for $35,000 in November 1974. Zillow estimates its worth today at $980,000. Not a bad return on an investment!

Pictured below is the view from the front of Peg’s former home. I cannot tell you how haunting it was to be standing in front of the residence with the Hollywood Sign looming over us.

You can watch the E! Mysteries & Scandals episode about Peg by clicking below.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to E.J., of The Movieland Directory, for writing about this location in his book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Peg Entwistle’s former home is located at 2428 North Beachwood Drive in Hollywood.