The Good Old Days

The lovely Linda Darnell’s life was a good one, but she suffered a lot, too. Tragically she died young at the age of 41 when she was caught in a house fire in Chicago, IL.  It’s a very sad story, which we share below:

Linda Darnell had been acting on television for quite a few years and also live theatre, when she got the role of the lusty mistress Sadie in the low budget, “Black Spurs.” After the film opened, she was getting praise for her performance. Her agent called her and told her that because of Black Spurs, she now had offers on three other pictures. At the time she heard about the possible new movie roles, she was visiting her former secretary in Chicago and it looked like Linda had a promising future to look forward to making more films in Hollywood.

However, on the night of April 9, 1965, Linda awoke to intense heat and found flames in the living room. Linda’s friends narrowly escaped from an upstairs window, but Linda didn’t make it out. Linda was found next to the burning living room sofa.Although still alive when the firefighters found her, she had third degree burns over 90% of her body. She was immediately rushed to Cook County Hopsital and the doctors did all they could to save her. However, on April 10th, (33 hours after the fire) Linda died. She was 41.

Ironically, she had been watching Star Dust (1940) on television, which was one of the films that set her career in motion, when the house caught fire.

After her death, a man who said he was Darnell’s fiance identified her body. A coroner’s inquest into her death ruled that Darnell’s death was accidental and that the fire had begun in or near the living room sofa and was caused by careless smoking; both adult women were smokers. 

Some more sensational reports claimed that on the night of the fire, Darnell had been intoxicated and despondent about the waning of her career. But biographer Ronald L. Davis, in his book Hollywood Beauty, wrote that there was no evidence that any of these stories were true, or that the actress was in any way responsible for the blaze. By his account, Darnell was burned over 90 percent of her body because rather than jump from the window as her friend’s daughter had already done, she tried to make it to the front door. She reached the door but the doorknob was too hot to touch.

Linda had requested that her ashes be taken to New Mexico and scattered over the Hurd ranch, but the Hurds refused permission when the time came. “They wrote us and wanted the most dreadful ritualistic thing of depositing her ashes,” it was recalled, we disliked the group so much that we said, “We’re not going to permit it.” So, Linda remains sat in the office of a Chicago cemetery for ten years. Finally in 1975, after her duaghter Lola had moved to Pennsylivania and given birth to her children, se asked a local funeral director to send hfor her mother’s ashes and had them buried in the Adams family plot.

“It was painful,” Lola declared. “It wasn’t until Mother’s ashes were in the ground that I saw her death was real.”

Lola concluded on coming to grips with her mother’s death that she wouldn’t have wanted to live in a disfigured state. “What would she have looked like?” Lola asked herself. “Not simply from a professional standpoint, but just to get up in the morning and look at herself in the mirror. And what would her health have been?”

Her ashes are interred at the Union Hill Cemetery, Chester County, Pennsylvania, in the family plot of her son-in-law.

Lana Turner was a film actress and sex symbol who was "discovered" while drinking soda at a diner counter. She made over 50 films and was married seven times.

Born on February 8, 1921, in Wallace, Idaho, Lana Turner was "discovered" while drinking soda at a Hollywood café. She signed with MGM and became a celebrated film actress and movie sex symbol. Married seven times, Turner was romantically connected to numerous actors. In 1958, Turner's daughter stabbed gangster Johnny Stompanato, 

Actress. Born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner, on February 8, 1921, in Wallace, Idaho. (Though Turner claimed in her autobiography that she was born in 1921, most sources agree on the earlier date.) One of America's most celebrated sex symbols during the 1940s and 1950s, Turner made over 50 films. Her tempestuous personal life—seven marriages, a stable of lovers and a very public murder scandal

They never kept there names they always changed to suit Hollywood life style 

Turner and her mother, Mildred, left the Idaho mining town of Wallace for San Francisco. In 1935, they moved again, this time to Los Angeles. While still a student at Hollywood High School, Turner was "discovered" by William R. Wilkerson, the publisher of the Hollywood  

On April 4, 1958, police were called to Turner's Beverly Hills home to find the actress's lover, Johnny Stompanato, a minor Los Angeles hood and an associate of the notorious gangster, Mickey Cohen, dead of a stab wound that had punctured his kidney and aorta. Turner's 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane, had stabbed Stompanato after overhearing him threatening to kill her mother during a domestic dispute. A judge ruled that the incident constituted justifiable homicide, but Cheryl was sent to live with her maternal grandmother.

Elizabeth Short was just 22 when she was murdered in the most savage way - and her death is still one of the most notorious crimes in Hollywood history.

she was like a Gothic type of girl that what we called the today 

Elizabeth Short, best known as "the Black Dahlia," was born on July 29, 1924, in Boston, Massachusetts, the third of five daughters born to Cleo and Phoebe Mae (Sawyer) Short. Cleo Short abandoned the family when Elizabeth was 5 years old. At a young age, Short developed a strong affinity for cinema. By her teens, she had set her sights on becoming an actress.

Nicknamed "the Black Dahlia," Elizabeth Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles in 1947, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. The Black Dahlia's killer was never found, making her murder one of the oldest cold case files in L.A. to date, and the city's most famous.

• Elizabeth short
• Black dahlia nick name
• 22 years old
• brutally murdered  in 1947 los angeles 

Frances left school in no time and went to San Fransisco to seek stardom. She changed her name to Carole after her favorite actress Carole Lombard and found the name Landis in the telephone book. She dyed her hair from soft brown to blonde. It didn't took long for Carole to work her way up and within 18 months she went from a Hula dancer to a popular band singer with the Carl Ravazzo Orchestra at the St. Francis hotel. Carole was barely 17 when she headed for Hollywood in the late summer of 1935. And after spending only 6 months in Hollywood, she met Busby Berkely at an audition for Warner's "Variety Show". Berkely was able to get Carole a 7 year contract. She was being offered roles but mostly in B-movies. In 1938 the bubble bursted and her contract with Warner's ended. Carole went back to modelling, some stage plays and doing some radio. It was Hal Roach who gave Carole's career a push and it was back on track. He casted Carole as Loana in One Million B.C  
but her acting was obscured by Carole's beautiful body who was clad in animal skins only. She was then labeled as 'the ping girl'. Carole was not at all happy with that nickname as *ping* was meant as in the erection in a man's pants. Carole's body caused much controversy many times as she was a rather busty woman.

She started to be on happy with her looks and hair 

Even now Hollywood makes you do that things never change
In 1939 Carole had plastic surgery to perfect her face. The tip of her nose and the tip of her chin were removed as they 'grew slightly towards eachother'. In 1940, Carole married a yacht salesman but the marriage only lasted for 4 months. And in 1941 Carole also got a contract at 20th Century Fox. In the contract was included a non-negotiable cause: sleeping with Fox's head Darryl F. Zanuck. He was known for sleeping with every actress he hired; those who declined did not work for Fox. In 1941, Carole was also very buzy for the war effort; she spent much time touring army bases. Carole spend more time with the troops than any other Hollywood star and her husband had much difficulties with it. These tours almost costed Carole her life: near-fatal pneumonia, amoebic dysentery and malaria. But Carole was a true trouper. Carole wrote a book about the tours called Four Jills in Jeep in which she writes her experiences along with with Kay Francis, Mitzi Mayfair and Martha Rye. Four Jills in a jeep was later made into a movie. In 1943 Carole married Air Force Captain Thomas Wallace in England. But just like the others, this marriage collapsed too in 1944. Wallace had much difficulties in being married with a movie star. Carole dyed her hair brown; something she refused for a leading role in the movie Sand and Blood (1941). They actually wanted Hedy Lamarr for the part but her studio refused to loan her out. Carole did not want to become a second rate Hedy and refused to dye her hair brown also because she made fame as a blonde. It has been said that this role would have given her the Hollywood career she dreamed of. Eventually it was Rita Hayworth who was cast for the part. Not a brunette either.