• Today’s Topics:
  • THE STORE
  • Helen Twelvetrees Bio
    • Or Head to Amazon to buy my Helen Twelvetrees book
  • Head to WarrenWilliam.com
  • Cliff’s Fiction
  • Blog

Immortal Ephemera

Classic Movies & Movie Collectibles

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Privacy Policy
  • Reviews
    • Pre-Code
    • Horror
    • Gangsters
    • Warner Archive
  • Biographies
  • Card & Collectible Galleries
    • About Movie Collectibles
    • My eBay Store
    • My Books
    • Glossary
    • eBay Shopping Tips
  • Info / Misc
    • About
    • Privacy Policy
    • My Bookshelf
    • Movie Books
    • WAMPAS
  • Social
    • Contact
    • YouTube
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
You are here: Home / News - Notes / More Historical Movie Star “Deaths in Threes”

More Historical Movie Star “Deaths in Threes”

March 25, 2014 By Cliff Aliperti Leave a Comment

Helen Twelvetrees, Pefect Ingenue by Cliff Aliperti
Support the site? Skip buying me a coffee and grab yourself some movie cards & collectibles instead! Shop my eBay store here.


I wrote about the forced phenomenon of “Death in Threes” before, so I’ll try not to repeat myself much here. That post came soon after a rash of Hollywood-related passings during mid-2012 and this post comes not too long after the too busy obituary season of late 2013 into early this year. The subject once again aroused my curiosity out of completely unrelated research, this time when I spotted an article about Robert Ames’ death in a 1931 newspaper while mining background info for my recent Winner Take All post.

Robert Ames 1930s Picturegoer Postcard

Ames has cropped up on Turner Classic Movies a lot this month. We’ve had opportunity to see the former RKO star alongside TCM Star of the Month Mary Astor in Smart Woman and Behind Office Doors and I came across his obit not long after seeing him in Three Who Loved during TCM’s March 19 Betty Compson birthday schedule of movies. He’s also in Millie, which I semi-recently wrote about. So even though Ames had no business interrupting what I was doing, having seen the obscure actor so much lately I couldn’t look away once his name caught my eye:

1931-11-28-san-jose-news-p1-ames-third-death

Headline spotted in the San Jose News, November 28, 1931 edition, page 1.

Robert Ames, who died November 27, 1931, supposedly completed a trio that also included Hungarian-star Lya De Putti (also November 27) and Robert Williams (November 3), who proved popular opposite Jean Harlow and Loretta Young in Columbia’s Platinum Blonde that same year.

I covered several trios of deaths from 1935 in my earlier “Death in Threes” post, but coming across the Ames grouping made me wonder about other movie-specific groupings.

While our morbid subject definitely loans itself to cases of the shivers I do believe we have a tie when it comes to creepiest reportage of a death trio. First, a familiar one to those who’ve read my Dorothy Dell biography:

1934-06-09-the-milwaukee-sentinel-p1-dorothy-dell

Found in The Milwaukee Sentinel, June 9, 1934, page 1.

Poor Dell had recently exploded to stardom in Little Miss Marker when she died tragically in a car wreck at just age 19, but why not spice up the headline a little, right?

Lilyan Tashman had died on March 21, 1934, but it was at the funeral of actor Lew Cody, who died over two months later, May 31, that Dell herself supposedly said: “They always say that when death comes to one actor it comes to two others before very long … There was Lilyan Tashman, and now Lew Cody—I wonder who’ll be next.”

The teenage actress died June 8.

The following headline was served up by the Spokane Daily Chronicle on January 11, 1936 (page 9):

1936-01-11-spokane-daily-chronicle-p9-death-in-threes

He was Harry Carr, a 58-year-old journalist who had begun his career at the Los Angeles Times in the late 1890s and actually wrote and appeared in a few silent films. Carr had died the day before the headline, January 10, 1936, the very date he was said to have written his last column for the Times, published on the 11th, in which he asked, “Death cuts down the famous by threes in Hollywood—Thelma Todd, John Gilbert and quien sabe (who knows)?”

Todd had died December 10, 1935 and Gilbert just before Carr, January 9, 1936. Given the status of the two film stars who preceded him, I’d like to think a friend was doing a Harry Carr a favor and that the headline would have made him smile.

If any period could compare to December 2013 it would have to be April 1975 when Richard Conte extended the normal trio to four major Hollywood deaths in just six days!

From the Lawrence Journal-World, April 16, 1975 (page 21):

1975-04-16-lawrence-journal-world-p21-conte-makes-four

Richard Conte died on April 15, 1975 and had been preceded by a pretty notable trio: Character actress Marjorie Main on April 10; Larry Parks, who had starred in The Jolson Story (1946) and Jolson Sings Again (1949) on April 13; and two-time Academy Award winner for Best Actor, Fredric March, on April 15.

I took a quick glance at a few of the Fredric March obituaries and, in an interesting “Death in Threes” aside, there was no mention of either Main or Parks in his write-ups. I guess no gimmickry required in reporting the death of a star of his magnitude.

Going back to 1949:

1949-09-23-st-petersburg-times-p5-sam-wood-third

From the St. Petersburg Times, September 23, 1949, page 5.

Director Sam Wood died September 22, 1949 completing a trio begun by character actor Frank Morgan on September 18 and leading man Richard Dix, September 20.

That set everyone on edge when recording artist Buddy Clark died in a plane crash, October 1, 1949:

1949-10-18-spokane-daily-chronicle-p8-hollywood-in-jitter

Headline from the Spokane Daily Chronicle, October 18, 1949, page 8.

“Now everybody in the business who owns up to a heart murmur or an ulcer figures Clark’s violent death started a new cycle.”

I’ll go ahead and invent an unreported trio for Clark to be a part of, grouping him with director Elmer Clifton (October 15) and actor Craig Reynolds (October 22). That wasn’t too hard.

You can really stretch status, occupation and timeline to make these groupings seem as random as they actually are. Still, it is interesting to see when and how the period press would group our dearly departed stars together. Other trios I bumped into:

1955-08-06-the-bend-bulletin-p1-three-in-one-week

Headline from The Bend Bulletin, August 6, 1955, page 1.

The above headline linked the August 5, 1955 deaths of Carmen Miranda and Suzan Ball, reported as being 12 hours apart, with the death of Robert Francis, star of The Caine Mutiny (1954), who died in a plane crash on July 31.

I found this tucked inside Wayne Morris’ obituary a few years later:

1959-09-15-the-spokesman-review-p1-wayne-morris

Found in The Spokesman Review, September 15, 1959, page 1.

Morris died on September 14, 1959, following Edmund Gwenn on September 6 and Paul Douglas on the 11th.

Shortly after Grace Kelly’s death, September 14, 1982, Santa Ana Orange County Register staff writer Jerry Hollerman not only names her as “the third,” completing a somewhat broadly dated but most star-studded trio begun with Henry Fonda (August 12) and Ingrid Bergman (August 29), but also provided several additional semi-recent groupings when he asked:

1982-09-27-santa-ana-orange-county-register-pc1-headline

The Register, September 27, 1982, page 1.

Hollerman adds the following groupings to our list:

  • 1981: William Holden (November 16), Jack Albertson (November 25) and Natalie Wood (November 29).
  • 1980: Steve McQueen (November 7), Mae West (November 22), George Raft (November 24) and Rachel Roberts (November 26).
  • 1979: Mary Pickford (May 29), Jack Haley (June 6), John Wayne (June 11) and Darla Hood (June 13).
  • 1977: Elvis Presley (August 16), Groucho Marx (August 19) and Sebastian Cabot (August 22).
  • Again, 1977: Ethel Waters (September 1), Zero Mostel (September 8) and Maria Callas (September 16).
  • 1967: Spencer Tracy (June 10), Jayne Mansfield (June 29) and Vivien Leigh (July 8).

Eleanor Parker and William Holden 1954 Equator Tobacco Card

Eleanor Parker and William Holden

You might snicker at some of the groups and find it a stretch to list Darla Hood alongside John Wayne or Sebastian Cabot with Elvis, but when these personalities passed away people were just as likely to utter their names within the same sentence as we did Joan Fontaine and Peter O’Toole with predecessors Eleanor Parker and Audrey Totter late last year, or Andy Griffith, Ernest Borgnine and Celeste Holm the year before.

In truth these groupings are often haphazard (Hollerman also mentioned tightly timed but otherwise loose trios of Ross Martin-Allen Ludden-Harry Chapin in 1981 and Dorothy Stratten-Gower Champion-Sam Levenson in 1980) beyond their occurrence in our own particular time and place. Personally, I think I find them interesting in retrospect for the very reason that it is a way to group together like personalities who aren’t otherwise typically associated with one another.

We’re often saddened by the loss of our favorite stars but, no matter their age or how distant their contribution, seemingly silly connections such as the dark tradition of “Death in Threes” do have a way of keeping us talking about them and remembering them in social settings, online and off.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Filed Under: News - Notes Tagged With: deaths in threes, obituary

← TCM Preview March 2014 – A Look Inside My Now Playing Guide TCM Preview April 2014 – Plus Blogathons; Odds and Ends →

About Cliff

I write about old movies and movie stars from the 1920s to the 1950s. I also sell movie cards, still photos and other ephemera. Immortal Ephemera connects the stories with the collectibles. Read More…



Ways to Help Support the Site:

Every little bit helps pay the bills. My thanks in advance if you'd consider helping out through one of the following methods:
 

Preferred: Shop the Immortal Ephemera Store and get yourself some vintage movie items for your trouble!

Donate direct through my PayPal.me link.

Or begin your regularly scheduled Amazon shopping through my Amazon affiliate link.

Thanks again!
—Cliff Aliperti

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Copyright © 2002-2025 Immortal Ephemera - (privacy policy) - Article by Cliff Aliperti unless otherwise noted.

%d