I don't know who it is. This was given to me almost as is and I only
re-wrote it to change the voice and style.
My thoughts were at first Christian Brando or one of his brothers. There
was a recent tabloid article saying that Marlon recorded phone conversations
and had compromising films and photographs of himself and certain stars.
But on the other hand. That remark about the murder of the young
starlet. If I remember my Hollywood lore, there was a late forties case of
the disappearance of a young starlet named, Jean Spangler (I think). She was
a bit player who disappeared somewhere near Griffith Park (at least her
purse was found near the parks entrance). All that was known was that Miss
Spangler was never seen again.
Guess who had she been known to secretly "date?" The man known, by some
as the meanest man in Hollywood, the superstar Hollywood icon, who by most
reliable speculations was the big star who raped Natalie Wood, yep, Kirk
Douglas.
And whose tragic, long addicted son Eric, just met his demise?
Ambrose
> Guess who had she been known to secretly "date?" The man known, by
some
> as the meanest man in Hollywood, the superstar Hollywood icon, who by most
> reliable speculations was the big star who raped Natalie Wood, yep, Kirk
> Douglas.
> And whose tragic, long addicted son Eric, just met his demise?
> Ambrose
>
Eric was my first thought too...
Daph
He was my first thought too.
<snip>
> The son, who has lived a reckless and dissolute life is aware of the
> truly hot nature of his cache of material and is extremely paranoid that
he
> could be in danger if word gets out what he has in his possession.
<snip>
> But on the other hand. That remark about the murder of the young
> starlet. If I remember my Hollywood lore, there was a late forties case
of
> the disappearance of a young starlet named, Jean Spangler (I think). She
was
> a bit player who disappeared somewhere near Griffith Park (at least her
> purse was found near the parks entrance). All that was known was that Miss
> Spangler was never seen again.
> Guess who had she been known to secretly "date?" The man known, by
some
> as the meanest man in Hollywood, the superstar Hollywood icon, who by most
> reliable speculations was the big star who raped Natalie Wood, yep, Kirk
> Douglas.
> And whose tragic, long addicted son Eric, just met his demise?
> Ambrose
>
oooooOOOOOooooOOOOOooooh! most excellent gossip! Thanks, Ambrose! your
BI's are always very entertaining!
--
-J
** Keeper of Bette Midler and Betty Buckley **
This is very interesting. I had never heard of Jean Spangler (and I
read about "old Hollywood" alot). A Google search on her name turned
up quite a few hits. This one is a pretty good one:
http://www.geocities.com/welkerlots/jean.htm
Got any more stuff you think is "boring," Ambrose? Pass it on if so.
:)
I often think that gossip about the old movie stars is more
interesting than gossip about current celebrities.
Elizabeth
If any of this is true, and/or can be shown to hold water, I think Ambrose's
most excellent blind item may evolve into a honest to goodness hot tip. I
wonder what the details surrounding Eric's death was. And just for the
record, he was who I first thought of as well.
Hmmmm...is this possible agc's shot at social redemption??? A BI turns into
a tip, which turns into an investigation, which turns into the hottest
gossip to hit the town, which turns into justice....hey, a girl can dream
can't she???
Even if it doesn't pan out, keep them coming Ambrose. :)
This *has* to be your new sig line!
> Hey, don't look at me like that! Those Polaroid's were her idea. I would
> have given them back long ago if her lawyer hadn't skinned me alive and
> nailed my hide to the stall door (which I used to pay rent on) where she
> keeps that Arabian gelding (that incidentally I bought for her, when I once
> upon a time had some real money--well not real money, but real credit.)
> You know, I can forgive her taking all my money, everything I own and
> even sleeping with my friends (even the disgusting ugly ones) and telling
> all the rest of my friends about it), but the one thing I'll never forgive
> was that she forced the sale of my scratched, busted and repaired old
> Martin that had been autographed by Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker,
> Del McCrory, Kinky Freidman, Leon Russell, Elvin Bishop, and J.J Cale and
> dozens of other. I've lost a lot of guitars over the years and I feel a
> special emptiness in my heart for each one but losing that old Martin D-18
> (with the original blue velvet line case molded case) was like losing a best
> friend. I even remember the last song I played on it. I wanted to make it a
> happy song, but for some reason all I could manage was a painfully sad John
> Prine song, "Hello In There."
> Ambrose
>
>
They'd have to pry that sucker out of my cold, dead fingers. I hope that
someday you
will be reunited with the gittar - but not the ex.
Linda C.
And this is why I love your posts Ambrose. Good gossip, great stories
-- what more could a girl ask for? Come sit next to me & entertain me
for the day.
Francine
...
> But on the other hand. That remark about the murder of the young
>starlet. If I remember my Hollywood lore, there was a late forties case of
>the disappearance of a young starlet named, Jean Spangler
I think that's too far back. I'm thinking Karyn Kupcinet.
--
Visit my Iron Age Pages for technical and fun stuff (holiday specials, too)!
http://pages.prodig
Not "horribly" just mysteriously. She took a lot of drugs and police
have theorized she passed out, fell and hit her head on the furniture.
> I think they said something like she'd been the girlfriend of some hot
> actor whose show I remembered from when I was a kid because it was about a
> ranch in Texas, something like The Big Country or The Wide Country. I forget
> his name but the shows other star was Earl Holliman.
Andrew Prine. The rumors that he killed her ruined his career.
Also there was some
> connection to the actor who played Judy Robinson's boyfriend on TV's Lost in
> Space. He was a friend of Ms. Kupcinet or his wife was. Wish I could
> remember his name. Seems like they said she was murdered in her apartment or
> the laundry room of her apartment house, something like that. Thanks much
> for the info.
She was found on the living room floor of her apt. at 1227 Sweetzer,
between Santa Monica and Fountain.
Linda C.
I'm not. Andrew Prine was a minor TV cowboy, not a big movie star. And
by 1963, the studio system was pretty much history so it's doubtful that
you'd see a group effort to cover up for one star. I like the Douglas
angle much better.
Linda C.
In some theories concerning the Black Dahlia murder, the name Jean
Spangler has been mentioned as a possible previous murder victim of the
Dahlia's killer. Another possible victim, according to murder theory
speculators, was society heiress Georgette Bauerdorf, who the sensationalist
press of the day reported was murdered by someone dubbed "The Jitterbug
Slayer."
Ambrose
Ambrose, wasn't it rumored that someone famous was the Black Dahlia killer? I
thought I remembered a crime show a few years ago that profiled the case & for
some reason I thought Orson Welles was mentioned as the possible killer, did
you ever hear that?
Denise
"I've seen rock 'n' roll's future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen,"
Rolling Stone critic John Landau, said in 1975.
Calling on my memory for show business trivia, Andrew Prine played a
Manson like leader of a devil worshipping cult with a delicately beautiful
woman named, if I'm not mistaken Brenda Scott, or maybe it was Linda Scott.
She married some big TV star, that guy on the CBS version of Marcus Welby,
Medical Center UMC, whose gray eminence was James Daily(sp) dad of Tyne who
played a cop on Cagney and Lacey who was married Georg Stanford Browne who
played a cop on The Rookie's with Kate Jackson. Tyne's brother Tim was a
pilot on NBC's Wings.
(Please someone hit me in the back of the head with a ball pein hammer
to stop before these six degrees get to Kevin Bacon.)
Uh oh, too late. I just remembered. Tim Daily starred in Diner with
Kevin Bacon and Mickey Rourke who played in 91/2 Weeks with Kim Bassinger
who once guest stared on Charlie's Angels with Kate Jackson who was married
to Andrew Stevens the son of Stella Stevens who starred in The Nutty
Professor with Jerry Lewis, who George Hamilton once said he believed he'd
never make it as a serious actor because he thought he looked like a skinny
Jerry Lewis, who incidentally starred with Robert De Niro in that movie "The
Comic" who also starred with Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart and of course
Mickey starred with Kevin Bacon in--
Oh no, there's no end to this, is there.
You know one night John Lennon was in a hotel room tripping on acid with
Dr. timothy Leary and they called up sci-fi writer Phillip K Dick to tell
him his novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was the explanation of
humanities place in a multi-layered overlapping coincidental universe. True
story. Whenever Phil would lecture he told it--at least he did when I heard
him lecture, and apparently Leary confirmed it.
(thock) Is the sound of a ball pein hammer hitting the back of a head.
Wait I just thought of another degree!
(thock).
:-)
Ambrose
> Calling on my memory for show business trivia, Andrew Prine played a
> Manson like leader of a devil worshipping cult with a delicately beautiful
> woman named, if I'm not mistaken Brenda Scott, or maybe it was Linda Scott.
> She married some big TV star, that guy on the CBS version of Marcus Welby,
> Medical Center UMC, whose gray eminence was James Daily(sp) dad of Tyne who
> played a cop on Cagney and Lacey who was married Georg Stanford Browne who
> played a cop on The Rookie's with Kate Jackson. Tyne's brother Tim was a
> pilot on NBC's Wings.
> (Please someone hit me in the back of the head with a ball pein hammer
> to stop before these six degrees get to Kevin Bacon.)
And she's Justice Earl Warren's granddaughter, if you'd like another
strand to weave in there.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002033/bio
A likelier story is that a doctor or other medical pro did the deed
considering the details of the crime.
Linda C.
Thanks Linda : )
This is the all time scariest unsolved murder in L.A. history IMHO. It's
like some otherwise normal citizen went batshitnutz one night, then
faded back into repectability. There were cops who spent their entire
careers trying to solve this one.
Linda C.
Mary Pacios, a childhood friend of Elizabeth Short aka The Black Dahlia
wrote a book suggesting Welles as the killer. I really only know about the
case because my ex-wife was planning a book with a similar slant on Welles
because of a similiar murder of a woman in Italy who was cut in half. In
strangely rushed fashion Welles, with strange assistance from Harry Cohn who
hated Welles seemed to rushed off to Italy just after the BD murder. Yvonne
De Carlo, Eartha Kitt, and numerous other women spoke of Welles brutal
treatment of them. There were stories of at least one being paid off after
she was raped.
And it is odd that Welles favorite magic act was shawing a woman in half and
the artwork for the film he was working on but which he abandoned without
completing the editing, The Lady From Shanghai included (now miysteriously
missing) artwork for a crazy house scene which seemed to mirror the murder
scene, the wounds on Miss Shorts body and the arrangement of her body in the
field. My ex uncovered a lot of weird stuff about Welles time in Europe
including his being interviewed by the police concerning the death of the
young women mentioned above. Whatever the truth, Welles life was never the
same, he was paranoid, was convinced he was being harrassed by police and
was plagued with fixations about guilt murder and horror. Though he
returned to America it wasn't untill after Cohn's (with whose help Welles
would have needed to coverup up the crime and escape the consequences) death
that Welles seemed to relax, (even giving an eerie eulogy about how Harry
was the one person he would go to if he had commited some horrible crime.)
Even after Cohn's demise his work (mostly projects planned but never made)
continued to fixate on selfish, Dostoievski(sp)- Crime and Punishment-like
murders, and selfish angry guilt and the travails of coverups like the
murderous police chief character in Touch of Evil, The murderous Nazi
professor of Yale in The Stranger, Welles portrayal of Clarence Darrow the
defender of thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in Compulsion, the
mother-love-hate murder story of Hamlet, The weird Prisoner(?) with the
eerie trial of a mysteriously accused Anthony Perkins and even Welles' eerie
1970's euro tv series of "did they or didn't they do it?"
Welles was once discribed as having the look of a deranged baby about
him, and the experts my ex-wife talked to during her research said that
murders such as that of Elizabeth Short were commited almost as if they were
the act of an angry child, destoying the flesh of another and then playing
with pieces of the body and arranging them almost like a puzzle, something
clearly the act of a completely selfish and self indulgent psychotic
expressing infantile rage, someone without normal controls of his desires
urges, someone like Welles who spent his life in a series of addictions,
alcohol food, sex, and the rage and psychosis inducing drugs benzadrine and
dexidrine both of which Welles was taking in huge amounts at the time of
Black Dahlia murders.
Actually there are a number of books on teh Black Dalia murder including
a novel by James elmore which implies she was a hooker though there is
considerable evidence that she had a medical condition which precluded her
from having sexual relations and none of the researchers could come up with
even one man who had had sex with her.
There are almost as many suspects as there are books, among the suspect
a rich guy from Ohio who killed in Ohio went to Ca and then returned to Oh
where he was institutionalized. There was a nightclub owner who rented rooms
to young starlet wannabess, there was an elderly doctor who was linked to
Miss Shorts family, and a very harsh woman doctor who took over the old
progressively senile doctor's life and controlled him because of some secret
she supposedly knew about him.
Actor, hollywood historian and writer John Gilmore claims it was an
alcoholic who died in a mysterious fire.
Former LA police detective Steve Hodel(?) believes the killer was his
own deadbeat dad because he found in his fathers effects small pocket
portriats of a woman who seemingly resembles Elizabeth Short. Hodel's father
had been on the list of suspects but was cleared by the LAPD (something
which would have implicated the much revered Chief Ed Parker in a coverup if
it were true) though an LA district attorney (blanking on his name) believes
Hodel has a strong case.
It is odd that though all the particulars are now deceased, the Black
Dahlia's murder still considered an open case.
Ambrose
Absolutely, who cares about Brittany or Jessica, this is really interesting!
I totally agree, this makes for far more interesting reading.
-snip-
According to James Ellroy, who researched Karen's death as the
possible subject of a book, Karen was shot and it was accidental. He
said she was an amphetamine user and was being subsidized by her
father who was a Chicago bigwig, not some mysterious Hollywood figure.
Ellroy concludes that Karen keeps being put forth as a murder victim
because she died just after JFK and had social connections to him; she
was alleged to have been someone who "knew something" and was
silenced.
Mez
Ambrose, ITA, that was a fascinating read on the Black Dahlia, and it was hard
to believe how crazy Orson Welles was.
Denise
He was, appropriately enough for this board, a gossip columnist.
And here's a (somewhat nasty -- we love it!) article on HIM:
http://chicagomagazine.com/stories/0604kup.htm
(well, of COURSE few of the quoted would speak up while Kup was still alive
...)
Some rebuttal (buried in the "letters" link)
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=66968
--
Visit my Iron Age Pages for technical and fun stuff (holiday specials, too)!
IAWTP.
--
Poetic Badgers
"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud."
-Coco Chanel
> Former LA police detective Steve Hodel(?) believes the killer was
> his
> own deadbeat dad because he found in his fathers effects small pocket
> portriats of a woman who seemingly resembles Elizabeth Short. Hodel's
> father had been on the list of suspects but was cleared by the LAPD
> (something which would have implicated the much revered Chief Ed
> Parker in a coverup if it were true) though an LA district attorney
> (blanking on his name) believes Hodel has a strong case.
Hodel wrote a *very* interesting book (_Black Dahlia Avenger_) about his
research into the case and he exhaustively detailed his research
supporting his conclusions about why he believes the killer to be his
father. I've read it and highly rec it for any BD buffs.
> Hodel wrote a *very* interesting book (_Black Dahlia Avenger_) about his
> research into the case and he exhaustively detailed his research
> supporting his conclusions about why he believes the killer to be his
> father. I've read it and highly rec it for any BD buffs.
Hodel also blames Jean Spangler's and Karyn Kupcinet's deaths on his
dad, along with around 30 other murder.
It's a pretty silly book, but it may be fun for old-Hollywood gossip
fans.
Meanwhile, Don Wolfe, who wrote a who-killed-Marylin-Monroe "expose`"
a few years back, has written his own Black Dahlia book, due out early
next year. It's supposed to be called "The Mogul, the Mob, and the
Murder That Transfixed Hollywood". Or something like that. Sounds
like a humdinger!
> Poetic Badgers <poeticbadgers@spammenot> wrote in message
> news:<Xns952E543293B...@129.250.170.89>...
>
>> Hodel wrote a *very* interesting book (_Black Dahlia Avenger_) about
>> his research into the case and he exhaustively detailed his research
>> supporting his conclusions about why he believes the killer to be his
>> father. I've read it and highly rec it for any BD buffs.
>
>
> Hodel also blames Jean Spangler's and Karyn Kupcinet's deaths on his
> dad, along with around 30 other murder.
>
> It's a pretty silly book,
Not silly at all. IMO, he makes his case and makes it well.
> but it may be fun for old-Hollywood gossip
> fans.
>
> Meanwhile, Don Wolfe, who wrote a who-killed-Marylin-Monroe "expose`"
> a few years back, has written his own Black Dahlia book, due out early
> next year. It's supposed to be called "The Mogul, the Mob, and the
> Murder That Transfixed Hollywood". Or something like that. Sounds
> like a humdinger!
Is that you, Don?
--
Poetic Badgers Smeeter #32 MHM 35x30
Not a significant source of vitamins A or C
> > Hodel also blames Jean Spangler's and Karyn Kupcinet's deaths on his
> > dad, along with around 30 other murder.
> >
> > It's a pretty silly book,
>
> Not silly at all. IMO, he makes his case and makes it well.
If you say so. When I read it, the unintentional humor factor had me
laughing out loud. Funniest book I've read in a while.
> > but it may be fun for old-Hollywood gossip
> > fans.
> >
> > Meanwhile, Don Wolfe, who wrote a who-killed-Marylin-Monroe "expose`"
> > a few years back, has written his own Black Dahlia book, due out early
> > next year. It's supposed to be called "The Mogul, the Mob, and the
> > Murder That Transfixed Hollywood". Or something like that. Sounds
> > like a humdinger!
>
> Is that you, Don?
I'm guessing Don would not have put sneer quotes around "expose`". I
haven't read his Marylin book, but that one sounds mighty dippy, too.