Film's Fading Immortals
Newcastle Herald
Saturday March 22, 2003
INGRID BERGMAN
WON OSCARS FOR: Gaslight (1944) Anastasia (1956) Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Died of cancer in her London home on her 67th birthday, on the 29th August 1982. ``I have no regrets," she said. ``I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say."
Although it is often said that her ashes were scattered off the coast of Sweden, the cinerary urn was not empty at the funeral, making her official burial site next to her parents in Stockholm's Northern Cemetery.
HUMPHREY BOGART
WON OSCAR FOR: The African Queen (1951)
After having said to Lauren Bacall the night before, ``I hope I never have another night like that again", he got his wish and died of cancer in his Los Angeles home on the 14th January, 1957, at the age of 57.
He was cremated at California's Forest Lawn Memorial Park's crematory. Over 3,000 people attended a memorial service including Marlene Dietrich, Samuel Goldwyn, Danny Kaye, David Niven and Gregory Peck, with John Huston delivering the eulogy. Bogart had wanted his ashes sprinkled on the Pacific from his 55-foot yacht Santana, but as this was illegal, his remains were kept at Forest Lawn.
CLAUDETTE COLBERT
WON OSCAR FOR: It Happened One Night (1934)
Only retiring in 1992, though her last major movie hit was The Egg And I (1947), she died of natural causes in Barbados on the 30th July 1996, at the age of 92.
GARY COOPER
WON OSCARS FOR: Sergeant York (1941) and High Noon (1952)
Died of inoperable lung cancer. Having converted to Catholicism two years before, Pope John XXIII sent a message of goodwill to the dying actor on the 14th May 1961. Too ill to receive his Special Oscar on April 17, 1961, it was accepted on his behalf by a tearful Jimmy Stewart. Cooper watched the ceremony from his Los Angeles home where he died 27 days later, at the age of 60.
Buried initially in Culver City's Holy Cross cemetery & mausoleum, in 1974 his remains were moved to the Sacred Cross cemetery, Long Island.
JOAN CRAWFORD
WON OSCAR FOR: Mildred Pierce (1945)
Joan believed her Christian Science faith would cure her cancer but she died from pancreatic cancer and acute coronary occlusion on the 10th May 1977, at the age of 72.
Rumors persist that she committed suicide, with Debbie Reynolds being convinced of it, saying, ``There are too many coincidental events leading up to [her death]. I just feel Joan found some way to end this life before she looked too bad, before she had to suffer the ravages of decay anymore." Buried at the Ferndale Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York
BING CROSBY
WON OSCAR FOR: Going My Way (1944)
Suffered a massive heart attack while playing golf in Spain on 14th October 1977 and was dead before the ambulance could get him to hospital, at the age of 74. He said he wanted his epitaph to read ``He was an average guy who could carry a tune." His will stated that none of his sons could use a trust fund he had set up for them until they reached 65.
Buried at Holy Cross cemetery, Culver City, California. The epitaph reads ``Beloved By All Harry Lillis Bing Crosby 1904-1977".
BETTE DAVIS
WON OSCARS FOR: Dangerous (1935) Jezebel (1938)
Bette died in Paris of breast cancer, at the age of 81, on 6TH October 1989. Weeks earlier, after receiving the Donostia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Spain at the San Sebastian Festival, she had commented, ``If they'd waited any longer to give me this award, I wouldn't be here to receive it."
Buried in Forest-Lawn, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, with the epitaph ``She did it the hard way".
ROBERT DONAT
WON OSCAR FOR: Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939)
Died of a chronic asthma attack, in London on June 9th 1958, at the age of 53. His final film, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), was released posthumously, with his last words on screen to Ingrid Bergman being ``Stay here for a time. It will comfort me as I leave to know it. We shall never see each other again, I think. Farewell."
PETER FINCH
WON OSCAR FOR: Network (1976)
Died of a heart attack in the lobby of a Beverly Hills hotel while promoting Network on 14th January 1977, at the age of 60. First actor to receive an Oscar posthumously. A lifelong Buddhist, he was given a Roman Catholic service and buried in Hollywood.
REX HARRISON
WON OSCAR FOR: My Fair Lady (1964)
Died in New York, of pancreatic cancer, on 2nd June 1990, at the age of 82. On his death bed he told his younger son, Carey, to drop dead and informed his older son, Noel, ``There was something I always wanted to tell you. I could never stand the sound of your fg guitar."
He was cremated with part of his ashes scattered at Portofino, Italy, with some scattered on the grave of Lilli Palmer (his first wife) in Forest Lawn cemetery, Los Angeles.
SUSAN HAYWARD
WON OSCAR FOR: I Want To Live! (1958)
Diagnosed with tumors on her vocal chords in 1968, her health deteriorated over her final years. A lung tumour was discovered in 1972, followed by 20 brain tumors the same year. Her final public appearance was made in 1974 at the Oscars when she asked expert Frank Westmore to do her make-up. Shocked at her appearance, he was to say later, ``I was never more proud of my craftsmanship than when I saw Susan walk out on that stage. She looked not much different from the Susan Hayward of 1945, and that's how the world will remember her."
Later that year she went into a four-day coma, but recovered and went home to die. Other than close family, only three friends were allowed to visit - close friend Ron Nelson, Katherine Hepburn and Greta Garbo. Her bedroom stank from her body oozings and the loss of control of her bowels. Another four-day coma followed in 1975, during which she bit off her tongue, finally dying of a massive seizure on 14th March, at the age of 58.
She was buried in the cemetery of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Carrollton, Georgia.
WILLIAM HOLDEN
WON OSCAR FOR: Stalag 17 (1953)
Found dead in his fourth-floor Santa Monica apartment on the 16th November 1981, at the age of 63, wearing only a pyjama jacket and with a 2 inch gash on his forehead. Valuing his privacy and barely acknowledging his neighbors, he had been dead for up to four days, with his autopsy carried out by Dr Thomas T. Noguchi, the role model for TV's Quincy, ME. He deduced that, in a drunken state, Holden had slipped, hit his head on the bedside table and attempted to mop up the blood. With the alcohol preventing him from thinking straight, he had passed out within ten minutes, dying within half an hour, and making no attempt to telephone for help.
In accordance with Holden's wishes, no funeral service was held. The body was cremated, with his ashes scattered on the Pacific Ocean. He left Stephanie Powers $250,000 in his will.
LAURENCE OLIVIER
WON OSCAR FOR: Hamlet (1948)
Having developed cancer, he was told to cut down on booze, but when his daughter, Julie-Kate, once refused him a whisky top-up, he cursed her with the line, ``I can't believe a sperm from my testicle ever created such a c". On 1st July 1989 his kidneys began to fail and he died at his Sussex home ten days later, at the age of 82.
His grave is in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner, near the grave of actor Henry Irving. In September 1991, Sir John Gielgud unveiled a special stone there.
GEORGE C. SCOTT
WON OSCAR FOR: Patton (1970) but declined the award saying, somewhat ungraciously, that the Academy was a ``meaningless, self-serving meat parade."
Died in Westlake, California, on 20th September 1999, from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, at the age of 71. He lay dead for two days before being found by his housekeeper in his den in a house filled with empty bottles of booze.
Buried in the Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles
FRANK SINATRA
WON OSCAR FOR: From Here To Eternity (1953) He was so elated when he won that he went for a walk with the statuette and was accused of stealing it by a Beverly Hills policeman.
Suffered a heart attack on 14th May 1998 and was taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, where he died at the age of 82. Buried in Desert Memorial Park cemetery, Cathedral City, California, his funeral service was attended by a who's who of entertainment legends, including amongst many others, Milton Berle, Tony Curtis, Dom DeLuise, Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Bob Dylan, Mia Farrow, Jack Lemmon, Jerry Lewis, Sophia Loren, Lorna Luft, Liza Minnelli, Jack Nicholson, Anthony Quinn, Nancy Reagan, Debbie Reynolds, Bruce Springsteen, Gregory Peck and Robert Wagner. His epitaph reads ``The Best Is Yet To Come".
JOHN WAYNE
WON OSCAR FOR: True Grit (1969) When he won, he joked: ``If I'd known, I'd have put that eye-patch on thirty-five years earlier."
In 1964 he contracted lung cancer but made a successful recovery. When he told his son that he had ``the big C", his son thought he meant he had the clap. He made his last public appearance at the Oscars in April 1979.
On 1st May, he underwent an operation for a blocked intestinal passage and later that month Congress debated the awarding of a special medal to him. Doctors in his Los Angeles hospital stopped feeding him intravenously on 5th June 1979 and he died of lung and stomach cancer the same day, at the age of 72. He had converted to Catholicism not long before his death and was buried in an unmarked grave in Pacific View Memorial Park, Newport Beach, California. A marker has been added in recent times with the epitaph: ``Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes to us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself into our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday".
Main source: Fade To Black A Book of Movie Obituaries by Paul Donnelly, Omnibus Press
© 2003 Newcastle Herald
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