Ron Rosenbaum - The Corpse as Big as the Ritz: Esquire, August 1973

The Corpse as Big as the Ritz

Sarah Miles, Burt Reynolds, andthat Dirty Little Death in the Desert

By Ron Rosenbaum

Copyright 2016 by Ron Rosenbaum

Sergeant Forrest Hinderliter of the Gila Bend (Arizona) Police had been up since two in the morning with a dead body and a shaky story. Hed found the bodya black man with a bullet hole in his backlying on the floor in Apartment 44 of the North Euclid Avenue project at the western edge of town. Hed also found a woman there, and this was her story:

She woke up after midnight to find a man on top of her, making love to her. Shed never seen the man before. She told him to get off and get out; she warned him she was expecting another man. A car pulled up outside and flashed its lights. A minute later the other man came through the door. Explanations were inadequate. In the scuffle a gun was drawn, a .38 revolver. A shot went off, the first visitor died.

An accident, the woman told Sergeant Hinderliter, the gun had gone off by accident. An accident, the other man, the one who owned the .38, told the sergeant.

Sergeant Hinderliter had the body tagged and carted off to Phoenix for an autopsy. He took statements until six thirty in the morning, then returned to the station house to check in for his regular Sunday tour of duty.

He was drinking black coffee at Birchfieldss Caf at six minutes past noon when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Steel, the station-house dispatcher, on the line. She had just taken a call from a man at the Travelodge Motel. There was a dead body in room 127, it was reported, an overdose of something.

UP UNTIL 1965 Gila Bend showed up frequently in National Weather Summaries as having registered the highest daily temperature in America. One hundred twenty in the shade was not unusual. Occasionally Gila Bend was referred to as the hottest place in America.

It was hot in Gila Bend, but not that hot, the Mayor of Gila Bend confided to me one evening at the Elks Club bar. Someone in Gila Bend had been doing some fooling around with the thermometer readings to make Gila Bend look a few degrees hotter than it was. In 1965, the Weather Bureau did some checking and put a stop to the matter. Since then Gila Bend has been just another hot place.

Theres an old narrow-gauge railroad that runs south from the town to the open-pit copper mines near the Mexican border. The Phelps Dodge Corporation uses the railroad to run copper anodes from their foundries up to the Southern Pacific freight siding at Gila Bend. Hollywood Westerns occasionally use the railroads ancient steam locomotive and the cactus wastes surrounding the tracks for location work.

On January 28, 1973, an MGM production company shooting The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, a high-budget, middlebrow Western starring Sarah Miles, Burt Reynolds, and Lee J. Cobb, arrived at Gila Bend. Forty members of the cast and crew checked into the Travelodge Motel on the eastern edge of town.

THERE WAS NO pulse. The skin had cooled. Pale blotches on the hands, the neck, and the forehead suggested to Sergeant Hinderliter that death had come to the body several hours before he had. Rigor mortis, in its early stages, had stiffened the arms which were wrapped around an empty polyethylene wastebasket. It was twelve thirty P.M.

The young man lay curled up on his left side on the floor of the partitioned-off dressing-room area of Travelodge room 127. His nose touched the metal strip which divided the carpeted dressing-room floor from the tiled floor of the bathroom. His feet stuck out beyond the end of the partition.

The capsules were big and red. There were about a dozen, and most of them lay in two groups on the floor. Burt Reynolds would later testify he saw pills lying on top of the dead mans arm.

The sergeant wondered why the man on the floor had decided to collapse and die in what was clearly a womans bedroom: the vanity counter above the body teemed with vials of cosmetics, a womans wardrobe packed the hangers, a long brown hairpiece streamed across a nearby suitcase. As he stepped out to his squad car Sergeant Hinderliter felt a hand on his arm. The hand belonged to an MGM official.

Hed been drinking, the MGM man told the sergeant in a confidential tone. Hed been drinking, he swallowed a lot of pills, he took a bunch of pills and he was dead. He took an overdose, the man said.

The sergeant asked the MGM person for the dead mans name and position.

The name was David Whiting, he told the sergeant. He was Miss Miless business manager. You see, that was Miss Miless room he was in. It was Miss Miles who found him, but

Where is Miss Miles? the sergeant asked.

Shes over there in 123, Mr. Polls room, now, but shes much too upset to talk. Shes had a terrible experience, you can understand, and

Yes, he was my business manager, the sergeant recalls Miss Miles telling him a few minutes later. He was my business manager, but all he wanted to do was f me all the time and I wasnt going to be fed by him.

Sergeant Hinderliter is a mild-mannered and mild-spoken cop. He has a round open face, a blond crew cut, and a soft Arizona drawl. His dream at one point in his life was to earn a morticians license and open a funeral home in Gila Bend, but after four years study he dropped out of morticians school to become a cop because he missed dealing with warm bodies. In his off-duty hours Sergeant Hinderliter is a scoutmaster for Troop Number 204. He recalls being somewhat surprised at Miss Miless language. Now Ive heard that kind of talk sitting around with some guys, he told me. But I never heard a lady use those words. (Later, as we shall see, Miss Miles denied she had used those words.)

Miss Miles was stretched out on one of the twin beds in room 123, her head propped up by pillows. Her face was flushed, her eyes streaked and wet. She was upset, she told the sergeant, but she was willing to talk.

I might as well tell you the whole story, she said.

The sergeant took notes, and this is the whole story she told that afternoon, as he remembers it:

It all started at the Pink Palomino caf. There were a dozen of them there, movie people; they had driven thirty-six miles to the Palomino for a kind of pre-birthday party for Burt Reynolds who was to turn thirty-eight the next day, Sunday, February 11.

She had driven to the Pink Palomino with Burt Reynolds, but she left early and drove back to Gila Bend with Lee J. Cobb. She had wanted a ride in Cobbs impressive new cara Citron on the outside, a powerful Maserati racing engine within. Back at the Travelodge she proceeded to the cocktail lounge. She had one drink. She danced.

It was close to midnight when she started back to her own room. Halfway there she decided to stop by and apologize to Burt for failing to return to Gila Bend with him.

When she entered room 135, Reynoldss room, she found a Japanese masseuse there too. Sarah asked permission to remain during the massage. The Japanese woman rubbed, Sarah talked. Around three A.M. she left and walked around the rear of the building to her own room. As soon as she stepped into the room, she told the sergeant, David Whiting jumped out of the dressing room and grabbed her.

Whiting demanded to know where shed been and whom shed been with. She told him it was none of his business. He slapped her. She screamed. From the next room, the nanny Sarah had hired to look after her five-year-old son rushed into Sarahs room through a connecting door.

Sarah told the nanny to call Burt. David Whiting released Sarah and ran outside. Burt Reynolds arrived shortly thereafter and took Sarah back to his room where she spent the remainder of the morning.

Sometime later that Sunday morning, it may have been eight oclock, it may have been ten, Sarah left Reynoldss room and returned to the nannys room, number 126. She spoke briefly with the nanny, reentered her own room to use the bathroom, and found David Whitings body on the floor. She gasped, ran back to the nannys room, and told her to call Burt.