The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (30 page)

Jenny Dolly’s death and funeral had a great deal of press coverage around the world, but the next death at the Shelton received little attention at the time, though it has most certainly gone down in history as yet another victim of “The Suicide Apartments”.

Actress Clara Blandick was an established actress of theatre and films, winning roles such as Aunt Polly in the 1930 film
Tom Sawyer
. However, it was her role as Auntie Em in 1939’s
The Wizard of Oz
for which she is best remembered, though her part was actually very small in comparison to most of her work and only took her a week to film.

After the success of
The Wizard of Oz
, Blandick played various small roles, but by 1950 the work had dried up and she decided to retire. However, the former actress was unable to enjoy her retirement because of ill-health; she suffered from acute arthritis which left her in a great deal of pain for most of the latter part of her life. Still, Clara struggled on until finally things came to a head when her doctor gave her the tragic news that she was going to lose her eyesight. She was devastated and determined that she would not live to endure this; she could struggle to live with pain, but she was not prepared to suffer blindness.

In early April 1962, Clara disposed of all her medication and told her friend James Busch that she had done so because she did not want anyone getting their hands on it, “if anything should happen to me”. He did not think too much about the comment at the time, but in hindsight it became clear that the reason Clara worried about such a thing was because she had been planning her death down the very last detail in the weeks and months leading up to it.

On Sunday, 15 April 1962, it was time for her plans to be put into action. It would seem that the last few hours of the eighty-one year-old Clara Blandick’s life were relatively calm: she pottered around her Shelton apartment, styled her hair carefully and dressed herself in a royal-blue dressing gown. She then found a plastic bag, and sitting it beside her she picked up a pen and proceeded to write a short note. “I am now about to make the great adventure,” she wrote, explaining that she could not endure the agonizing pain any longer. “It is all over my body,” she said. “Neither can I face the impending blindness. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”

Once the note was written entirely to her liking, Clara then placed it on the table next to the sofa and picked up the plastic bag. Lying down on the couch, she then covered herself in a gold blanket before proceeding to pull the bag down over her head and wait for her inevitable death to arrive.

Nobody knows just how long it took for Clara Blandick to pass away, but the next day her landlady Helen Mason was shocked to find her lifeless body, still covered in the gold blanket. Mason called the police who removed the body and declared the death a suicide.

The tragedy of Miss Blandick’s passing was reported in several articles around the country, with the suicide method making the most comment. Sadly, it would seem that while Clara was once renowned for her performance in
The Wizard of Oz
, she is now only remembered for the tragic and lonely way she chose to end her life.

An unexplained and early death always causes headlines in Hollywood, but when the passing is so great that it inspires a loved one to commit suicide, it goes from tragic to absolute catastrophe.

Peggy Shannon was born in 1907 as Winona Sammon, and was raised in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. She developed a love for the entertainment business from an early age and while visiting an aunt in New York during 1923, she met Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld, who took an immediate liking to the youngster and hired her as a chorus girl. From there she went on to dance professionally with the Ziegfeld Follies and worked extremely hard in various productions. She expressed an interest in serious roles and was ambitious enough to ensure that her efforts paid off, eventually playing not only in dance roles, but dramatic ones too. In 1925 her confidence was boosted when she was voted “Miss Coney Island”, which not only gave her a huge amount of joy, but also exposed her to an audience who would not have gone to see her in the theatre.

In 1926 Peggy married an actor called Alan Davis, and then continued to work on Broadway in a variety of shows including “What Anne Brought Home”. However, with her star rising rapidly, it was just a matter of time before she was discovered by B. P. Schulberg, production head at Paramount Studios, and whisked off for a glamorous life in Hollywood.

For most actresses uprooted from New York and brought to California, success came slowly and steadily, but for Shannon, as soon as she arrived in the great state she was thrown into the deep end when the studio announced that the red-headed actress would be the new Clara Bow. Just two days later Peggy was employed on the set of
The Secret Call
after Bow suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to work. Peggy could be forgiven for being completely terrified at the new situation in which she found herself, but instead she threw herself into the work, sometimes filming from early in the morning until late into the night. The experience was exhausting but gratifying and Peggy quickly became a Hollywood star; she was rewarded in her hometown of Pine Bluff by receiving a “Peggy Shannon Day” in July 1931.

Unfortunately, it was not long before Peggy became known as difficult on set, and rumours flew that she also had a drinking problem. This could be hidden in Hollywood, but not so much in New York, when she returned for the theatre production of
The Light Behind the Shadow
and was quickly replaced because of her behaviour. The official line was that Peggy was dropped due to her being under the weather with a tooth infection, though in reality it was most probably her struggle with alcohol that was the problem.

What many people did not know was that while Peggy was dismissed as a difficult, alcoholic actress, she was actually suffering badly at home at the hands of her actor husband Alan Davis. When she had first travelled to Hollywood, Davis had stayed in New York to concentrate on his theatre work. However, after a bout of illness, the actor travelled to Los Angeles where Shannon tried desperately to get him into the movies. It was a disastrous move and while the actress quite happily knocked on many doors for her husband, nobody wanted to hire him. “He tried to get in,” she later said. “I tried to get him in, but no – he was Peggy Shannon’s husband and nobody would give him a test.”

The outcome of this was that Davis ended up going into a job that had nothing to do with the acting business, and he hated it with a passion. He became deeply unhappy and while he did occasionally receive the odd acting part, the marriage was under immense strain and had turned quite violent. Whether or not Peggy’s drinking was as a result of the unhappy marriage is up for debate, but one thing is for sure: it became harder and harder for her to hide the problem and her film roles began to dry up.

Then on 13 July 1938 Peggy was driving with her sister, Carole Beckman, when disaster struck. The car in which they were travelling was hit head-on with that of one being driven by a gentleman called Robert Thoren. The actress received a severe cut to the nose, along with others on her legs, while her sister suffered injuries to her chin. Details of the accident are sketchy to say the least, and it is not known if Shannon was drinking at the time of the accident, though it is safe to say that at that point, her reliance on alcohol was becoming a bigger problem than previously thought.

Meanwhile, things at home continued to go from bad to worse and Peggy was growing distinctly tired of financially supporting her now unemployed husband. Added to that, he had also begun to humiliate the actress in public, which distressed the woman and only succeeded in making her unhappier than ever before. On one such occasion the couple were visiting the home of actress Wynne Gibson, when Davis and Shannon got into a slight argument. Instead of letting the matter go until they went home, Davis suddenly lost his temper completely; struck out and hit his shocked wife, hurting her physically and embarrassing her in the process.

Peggy’s health started to suffer and she lost twenty-four pounds in less than a year – not because she was dieting but because of the stress caused by the marriage and her drinking problem. Things became so bad that finally in July 1940 Peggy Shannon decided to call time on her marriage to Alan Davis. “He was just lazy,” she told the court. “He played all the time.” She also told Judge Edward R. Brand about the incident at Wynne Gibson’s house, and Gibson herself stood up to defend her friend, telling the judge that the actor had struck her friend “over something very inconsequential”.

Shannon was relieved when the divorce was granted and she was finally able to walk away from her abusive marriage. She quickly fell in love with studio cameraman and actor Albert Roberts, and the two tied the knot in Mexico in October 1940, just three months after the divorce from Davis. Of course, the fact that she had married again so soon caused much debate and whispering, though Peggy was unprepared to comment on whether or not she had actually started dating the cameraman before her last marriage was over.

For a time it looked as though the new couple would live happily ever after, though this was quickly thwarted when Davis came back into their lives in an unexpected manner. One evening Peggy was spending the evening in a cocktail bar when she was spotted by her ex-husband. He came over to chat and before long they were talking about their lives, and the fourteen years they had been together. They had been through a lot and there had been good times in spite of the way they had parted, and it was not long before Davis was beginning to wish they had never gone their separate ways in the first place.

It would seem that Shannon may have returned home with Davis that evening, as the chauffeur’s wife later told police that she had met the woman at that time. But if she did visit with the actor, she most certainly was gone by morning when Davis told the driver’s wife that he was leaving to pick up some groceries. This was a lie and instead he asked the chauffeur to drive from his home at 747 North Wilcox Avenue to Shannon’s home at 4318 Irvine Street. Details of the reason he went to the house are cloudy to say the least, but what we do know is that, once there, he wandered up to the front door, knocked furiously, and when the door was opened, was met by current husband Albert Roberts. The cameraman was surprised to say the least at seeing his wife’s former love standing on his doorstep.

Roberts was shocked further when Davis began shouting four-letter expletives at him, and the tirade became so heated that the new husband punched the actor in the face, sending him flying flat on to his back as he did so. At this point chauffeur Ramón Larios saw what was going on and came running up the path to rescue his boss, while Albert Roberts ran to his neighbour’s house in order to phone the police.

Struggling up from the floor, Davis and Larios then took the unprecedented decision to go into Peggy’s home and start rummaging around. What they were looking for is not known, but by the time police arrived, they found Alan Davis talking on the telephone while his chauffeur was found in the garage in possession of two wristwatches, one of which had the initials PSD – Peggy Shannon Davis – engraved on it.

Both Larios and Davis were arrested immediately and hauled off to the nearest police station for questioning. Peggy Shannon was taken down later in order to give her version of events, though she could not help them much as it would seem that she was not at the house during the incident. Both Alan Davis and Raymond Larios were later released without charge, and what prompted the trip to the house and the events that followed have never been completely cleared up, though the story made great fodder for the newspapers at the time.

Less than two months later, Albert Roberts bid his wife goodbye and went off on a fishing trip with his friend, Elmer Fryer. Once on her own, Peggy planned to spend some time sunbathing, and dressed in a sun suit for the occasion. Barefoot, she sat at her kitchen table, smoked a cigarette and made her plans, though tragically she was never able to carry them out as she quite suddenly and without warning passed away. Her body slumped down over the table and the recently lit cigarette burned slowly but surely down to her now lifeless hands.

When Roberts returned from his trip, he was devastated to find his wife’s body at the table, along with several empty glasses and a bottle of soft-drink. Understandably, Albert was beyond shocked and he did not understand what could possibly have happened to his wife to cause her to expire so suddenly. The police were called and the body was taken away for a post-mortem examination, though at first no immediate cause could be found and the coroner immediately ordered laboratory tests to determine exactly what had happened.

Peggy’s funeral took place shortly afterwards at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where a tombstone was later installed which read: “That Red Headed Girl, Peggy Shannon.” But this sadly was not the end of the tragedy, as on 30 May 1941 – just days before the results of the chemical analysis were due back – Albert Roberts decided he could live without his wife no longer, and that he had no option but to join her in death.

The signs of despair had been there ever since he had said goodbye to his wife, and he spent much of his last few weeks telling friends and family just how much he hated being without Peggy, and how determined he was to end his life. Members of his circle told him not to be so silly, that life goes on and he would find peace over time, but Roberts found their misguided comments to be insulting. He determined that no one understood what he was going through; he was confused about the death and began to feel extreme pangs of guilt that he had not been there when Shannon had passed away. The guilt also turned to paranoia and he began to think that the police believed he was responsible; he even questioned Detective William Burris about it.

“You’ve got something on your mind. You don’t suspect me of Peggy’s death do you?” the concerned man asked.