Petrucelli - Morbid curiosity: the disturbing demises of the famous and infamous

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Table of Contents

Everybody loves MORBID CURIOSITY

Alan has written a very funny, very clever bookits shocking and sinful, and I couldnt put it down. He leaves no gravestone unturned, nothing buried. Morbid Curiosity is part Six Feet Under, part Mad magazine. Itll make a killing!

Joan Rivers

Even celebrities eventually die. In fact they do so in far more rivetingly grand-scale ways than mere mortals. And now that theyve met their maker, theyve also found their chronicler. Alan W. Petrucelli unearths the demises of the rich and famousfrom Valentino to Heath Ledger and beyondwith detailed research, dishy wit, and insight. This book is to die for!

Michael Musto

Morbid Curiosity is a cornucopia of Hollywood gossip and tidbits, much more humorous than macabre, delivered from a different point of view than any book Ive read about celebs. Who knew Al Jolson died in the same hotel suite in San Francisco in which Fatty Arbuckles career was ruined? Who knew Merv Griffins tombstone reads, I will not be right back after this message? Its breezy, pithy, informative, odd, and, despite its subject matter, certain to amuse.

Robert Osborne, host ofTurner Classic Movies

I couldnt put the book down until I finished reading every word. Isnt it interesting how people are fascinated with the subject of death... especially when you get older? As someone once said, The first thing I read is the obit page to see if my names there! You couldnt have picked a better title. Its a terrific read for those who have to know every little detail about the famous and infamous. Some great stories to be told at the dinner table. Cant wait to give my next dinner party!

Rona Barrett

For Stephen J. Finn,
who introduced me to a world inhabited by Cuddles Bardwell,
Eric Cartman, Eva Le Gallienne, Marsha Hunt, Russ Meyer,
Barbara Nichols, Barbara Payton, Ann Savage, Tura Satana,
Claire Trevor, Edgar G. Ulmer,, William Winter, Cornell Woolrich,
hirsute hydrocephalic midgets, and other memorable characters.
Every time I have fallen he has picked me up.
Every time I have embraced darkness, he has shown me the light.
I doubt there is a kinder, gentler, more loving man.

INTRODUCTION

Ive laughed with Lucy (1911-1989), cried with Karloff (1887-1969), kibitzed with Kafka (1883-1924), meditated with Garbo (1905-1990), booed at Billy the Kid (1859- 1881), chatted with Crawford (Joan, 1905-1977, and Broderick, 1911-1986), even planted New Guinea impatiens at the grave of Linda Darnell (1923-1965)and you thought she was pushing up daisies.

Ive held urns with the cremains of Ferdinando Nicola Sacco (1891-1927), Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888-1927), and Judy Tyler (1933-1957) in my hands; jumped over a locked gate protecting the privacy of Jean Harlow (1911-1937) (yes, I was caught and reprimanded); and attended the standing-room-only funeral of Jane Wyman (1917-2007), who was laid to rest in a plain coffin and dressed in a nuns habit since she was a member of the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church.

Ive prayed at the tombstones of everyone from A (Abbott, Bud, 1895-1974) to Z (Zimbalist, Efrem Sr., 1890- 1985).

Ive even... Ill give it a rest and leave some things buried.

Such grave matters, this thing I have for dead celebs.

And I know what youre dying to ask: Why?

Blame Basil.

As a child, I paid weekly visits to the grave of my grandmother, interred in a crypt in the Shrine of Memories at Ferncliff, a cemetery and mausoleum in Westchester County, New York. I was eleven, maybe twelve, and remember an aunt telling me that Sherlock Holmes was buried in the same building.

Sherlock Holmes? She must mean the definitive film Sherlock, Basil Rathbone (1892-1967)! Even back then, while classmates were discussing sports and the joys of the opposite sex, I was watching The Late Show, wishing I could dance like Fred (or Ginger), convincing worried family members that the fruit plate on my head was actually an emergency ration of vitamins B, C, and Dand sleuthing with the best private dick of them all.

Once I discovered Basils grave (Unit 1, Tier K, Crypt 117), dead celebs took their resting spots in my brain alongside old movies and trivial trivia, and I knew I didnt have a prayer of stopping. I began clipping obituaries. I plunged into research. (Imagine my delight when I found out my paternal grandmothers grave was across from Eddie Foy, 1856-1928, and his famous vaudevillian family of seven little Foys at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in New Rochelle, New York.)

Even back then, before I began getting paid for telling all about celebrities, I was digging the dirt. One Ferncliff salesman told me that Rathbone walked in one day to make final arrangements for him and his wife, Ouida (1885-1974). I dont believe in spending lots of money, he told the salesman, especially when I am dead. And so Rathbone chose the least expensive spot. Ferncliffs crypts are aligned in vertical rows; those at eye level are the most expensive, the cheapest are waaaay up touching the ceiling. Rathbone and wife chose two cheap seats. Each week, Id strain my neck and pay my respects to Basil and Ouida. One day I noticed that Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) was buried a few yards from Rathbone. His was an expensive, eye-level grave. Woolrich may be a footnote in most celeb circles, but to mystery and noir fans, hes a literary giant, considered a genius of the crime genre. The man who wrote Rear Window! Gay! Dead! And buried next to his mother, whom he never allowed to read his work. How much better does it get?

Much better. As I continued the unearthing, Ferncliff became my new playground. The Forest Lawn of the East was the final home to such notables as Joan Crawford (1905-1977), Judy Garland (1922-1969), Thelonious Monk (1917-1982), Moms Mabley (1884-1975), Malcolm X (1925-1965), Harold Arlen (1905-1986), Ed Sullivan (1901-1974), Diana Sands (1934-1973), Tom Carvel (1906- 1990), Paul Robeson (1898-1976), James Baldwin (1924- 1987), and Jerome Kern (1845-1945). The list is as long as a really good eulogy for a really liked person. In recent years, Aaliyah (1979-2001) and Kitty Carlisle Hart (1910- 2007), who was reunited with her hubby, Moss Hart (1904- 1961), have joined the permanent, hermetically sealed ranks. (The fact that Kitty went back to Moss was a bit curious since she told me she was going to be buried at her familys plot in New Orleans.)

Even those not staying a lifetime pay visits to Ferncliff: John Lennon (1940-1980), Jim Henson (1936-1990), and Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979) were cremated here; in 1988, the remains of Bela Bartok (1881-1945) were disinterred and sent back to his native Hungary.

And so my obsession grew. And grew. And grew. As I grew older and began my writing career, I traveled around the world, to this countrys and that ones graveyards, taking notes and photos, and always leaving behind prayers and thoughts... sometimes a rock if I was in the Jewish part of town.

Once I began working for national magazinesmy first professional story was the obit of actor David Janssen (1931-1980) that ran in

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