March 10, 2008

It has often been said that the death of a young actor brings them instant fame and immortality.  This theory can be said to be true for many young actors, such as James Dean, Sharon Tate, Freddie Prinze, River Phoenix, Brandon Lee and most recently Heath Ledger, who gain their own cult following after their shocking and premature deaths, which arouse the emotions of their fans who will hold them in their hearts forever.  What would have happened to these actors if they had lived?  Would their career have continued, thus making them into a bonafide Hollywood legend, or would their careers had ended as quickly as their lives had, leaving them wallowing in the pit of “didn't you used to be?”  Whether their career flourished or not isn't important.  Death gave them the guarantee that they would be remembered. 

However, it's not very often that a famous actor in the prime of their life loses his life.  It is the young talented people who the world never got to know that are more likely to die.  They are the ones who escape us because we never heard of them. They were the bit parts that had walk on roles, or small parts with a single line in the background in the movies that we cherish.  While we watch the big stars, we miss these struggling actors.  Through my pop culture research I often come across stories of people like these who lost their lives after making only a single film, or having a regional hit song, or making a few token appearances on television.  Three short lives and tragic deaths in particular fascinate me:  Peg Entwistle, Karyn Kupcinet and Danny Lockin.  While their deaths were very different in nature, these three unknown actors have a number of things in common.  All three were talented, all three met grizzly and horrific deaths, all three never found the stardom that they deserved and all three died in Hollywood.  Yet, while they will forever be remembered for the way that they died, we must remember that Peg, Karyn and Danny were real people with real lives and real stories.  That is why I present to you the tragic tales of these three obscure actors, that the mean streets of Hollywood chewed up and spit out, so that we will not only read in shocking horror about their tragic ends, but we can celebrate the achievements that they had when they were living.  Come with me as we remember these three forgotten young actors as:

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS

THE SHORT LIVES AND SENSATIONAL DEATHS OF PEG ENTWISTLE, KAREN KUPCINET AND DANNY LOCKIN: 

THREE ACTORS WHO HOLLYWOOD FORGOT

Peg Entwistle (1908-1932)  The world at large may not recognize the name Peg Entwistle, but she holds her own unique place in Hollywood’s history where she will be remembered forever as the Hollywoodland Sign Girl.  You see, on the evening of September 18^th, 1932 the distraught 24 year old actress climbed up a workers ladder to the top of the  40 foot letter "H" on the legendary Hollywood sign, during the era when it still read “Hollywoodland,” and dove off to her death.  When her body was found the next day by a hiker, officials had no idea who the young woman was, and only had the initials P.E. which were written on a suicide note that Peg had left in her handbag at the foot of the sign.  In an effort to identify the body, the LA Times ran the story alongside the note, naming the unidentified suicide victim as The Hollywoodland Sign Girl, thus giving her that title for eternity.  However, despite her suicide, Peg Entwistle was not a failure.  Far from it.  In fact, although she never made it in Hollywood Peg Entwistle had an illustrious career on the stage and even inspired actress Bette Davis to be an actress!  However, due to one unfortunate setback in 1932, Peg Entwistle would end her life, thus ending a career that would hardly be preserved for future generations to experience.

Born Millicent Lillian Entwistle in Port Talbot, Wales, Peg came to America as a young girl alongside her father, Robert, a prominent British actor who was bound for America where he was promised a job by Broadway producer Charles Frohman as his stage manager.  However, success would be fleeting for Robert who would be struck and killed in a hit in run five years after their arrival.  Thus, from age fourteen Peg, along with her siblings, were raised by their uncle Harold, who was also an actor on Broadway, and the manager of popular stage actor Walter Hampden.  As a result of these influences, it is no wonder that Peg had aspirations of her own to enter the family business.  Peg made her Broadway debut at age seventeen in a walk on part in her uncle’s production of Hamlet.  Not long afterwards she went to Boston where she studied theatre as a student of Henry Jewett’s Repository.

It was during her return to New York in 1926 that Peg inspired a very young Bette Davis to enter show business.  For decades after Peg's death, Bette Davis would claim that it was Peg Entwistle’s performance as Hedvig in Ibsen’s The Wild Duck that made her exclaim to her mother “I want to be exactly like Peg Entwistle!"  From 1927 until 1931 Peg Entwistle had a successful and promising career, appearing in productions alongside future stars Bob Cummings, Dorothy Gish, George M. Cohen and William Gillette.  She was even married, briefly, to actor Robert Keith as his fourth and final wife.  Gaining praises by reviewers, and being featured in a number of magazines and newspapers the small, beautiful blonde actress had expectations of greatness.  However, fate would rear its ugly head when she accepted a role in a Los Angeles production of The Mad Hopes alongside Billie Burke, and a still unknown young actor by the name of Humphrey Bogart.  Packing her bags, the plan was to go to Los Angeles for the duration of the production.  Her uncle Harold had relocated to LA so she wouldn’t be far from family.  Opening on May 23^rd, 1932, The Mad Hopes was a giant success and Peg gained the attention of David O. Selznick who signed her to a one picture contact with RKO Studios.  With fame on the silver screen calling Peg’s name she changed her plans and decided to stay in LA.

On July 23^rd, 1932 Peg began filming a thriller called Thirteen Women alongside Myrna Loy and Irene Dunn.  However, as a result of poor feedback by critics and test audiences, the film was cut by nearly twenty minutes, and most of Peg’s scenes were left behind on the cutting room floor.  Peg’s contact was not renewed with RKO.

Now as you can imagine, this was a giant blow to the young actress who had never experienced much rejection in her life after having so much success on the New York stage.  Yet, the theatre and the film business are two totally different worlds, and perhaps it just wasn’t Peg Entwistle’s time yet.  Also, perhaps expecting immediate success was a bit unrealistic.  However, Peg Entwistle wouldn’t wait around to give it another chance in Hollywood.  On the night of September 18^th, 1932 Peg Entwistle told her uncle that she was walking to the drugstore and then to visit some friends.  He would never see her alive again.

Sometime the next morning, a call came into the LAPD Central station.  A woman who refused to identify herself was reported to say “I was hiking near the Hollywoodland sign today, and near the bottom I found a woman’s shoes and jacket.  A little further on I noticed a purse.  In it was a suicide note.  I looked down the mountain and saw a body.  I don’t want any publicity in the matter, so I wrapped up the jacket, shoes and purse in a bundle and laid them on the steps of the Hollywood Police Station.”  When the woman’s identity was furthered questioned by the officer that took the call she hung up.  The caller was never identified.  The items the caller identified were found exactly where she had said she left them and in the purse was the short suicide note which read:

"I am afraid I am a coward.  I am sorry for everything.  If I had done this a long time ago it would have saved a lot of pain.  P.E.”

Police found Peg Entwistle’s body at the bottom of Mount Lee’s ravine.  She had fallen 140 feet to her death.  A corner’s report stated that she had died by multiple fractures to her pelvis, concluding that her death was not immediate, and that she most likely suffered for hours.  However, with only her initials at their disposal, the police were unable to identify the young actress.  It wasn’t until the LA Times ran the story about the Hollywoodland Sign Girl, and when her uncle had not heard from his niece in two days that she was finally identified. 

Peg Entwistle was cremated and her ashes were sent to be buried alongside her father in Glendale, Ohio.  A month later Thirteen Women was released, but closed nearly as fast, making hardly a peep, and went mostly forgotten in the world of cinema.  Not even Peg Entwistle’s well publicized death could gain it enough interest.  Thus came the tragic end of one of the potentially brightest talents Hollywood had.

However, Peg Entwistle’s suicide isn’t without its morbid ironies.  A week after her death Peg’s uncle received a letter from the Beverly Hills Playhouse.  In it was a request for Peg to play the lead in a brand new production, where in the final act Peg’s character would commit suicide!

Also, in another strange twist of fate, is the story of Peg’s stepson from her brief marriage to Robert Keith.  Robert had a son named Brian, who grew up to be far more noteworthy on the pop culture journey then his father and step mother, making his biggest success as playing Uncle Bill in the 1960’s sitcom Family Affair and Haley Mill's father in The Parent Trap.  Suicide would follow Brain’s life when his daughter Daisy committed suicide in 1997.  Dying of cancer at the time of her death, Brian would take a gun and end his own life two months later.  Sure, Peg Entwistle was never in Brian Keith’s life long enough to influence him, but isn’t it strange how these things happens in threes.

Yet it is still said that Peg Entwistle walks the Hollywood hills at night.  Over the years a ghostly apparition of a sad blonde woman in 1930s style clothing has been spotted by hikers walking through Griffith Park at night.  When approached, the woman is said to disappear, but the lingering smell of a Gardena scented perfume is left in the air.  Gardena perfume, incidentally, was Peg Entwistle’s trademark scent.  Perhaps this poor soul still walks the hills of Hollywood looking for the stardom that she never found in life, but instead became the ever lasting symbol of Hollywood's broken dreams.

Karyn Kupcinet (1941-1963)  Like many young starlets in Hollywood struggling to make it big, Karyn Kupcinet had many of the same sort of issues – loneliness, drugs, fear of failure and wondering where your next paycheck would come from.  However, unlike most starlets, Karyn Kupcinet’s life came to an end when she was murdered in a crime that was never solved.  Yet, being murdered on the evening of November 28^th, 1963, only days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, speculation has been made that Karyn Kupcinet knew something about the president’s death that she shouldn’t have, and the motive for her death was to make sure that she didn’t talk.

Karyn Kupcient was the daughter of popular Chicago Daily Times sports journalist Irv Kupcinet and lived a charmed life amongst Chicago’s upper crust.  A gorgeous brunette with deep dark eyes, she was encouraged by her mother to take up acting.  Making her stage debut at the age of thirteen, Karyn was eventually enrolled into the prestigious New York’s Actors Studio.  As a result of her father’s many connections, Karyn found producers to be easily accessible and taking the screen name Tammy Windsor, she made her Hollywood debut in a bit part in the 1962 Audie Murphy and Sandra Dee vehicle The Wild and the Innocent.  Further bit roles followed in Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors and Jerry Lewis’ The Ladies Man.  However, Karyn made most of her headway on television, where she made got guest roles on such shows as Wagon Train, Hawaiian Eye, Perry Mason, The Donna Reed Show and The Andy Griffith Show.

Yet life in Hollywood was not easy for the Chicago socialite.  Although she was getting steady work, it wasn’t always easy to survive and in 1962 she was charged with shoplifting.  Also, being forever concerned with her weight, Karyn became addicted to diet pills, and was known for abusing both those as well as other prescription drugs.  However, many of her troubles revolved around her stormy relationship with character actor Andrew Prine.  Prine, who had just gotten divorced, did not want to make their relationship exclusive, despite the fact that Karyn was pregnant with his child!  Getting an abortion, the pair broke up and Prine began dating another actress.  However Karyn had become obsessive towards Prine which led to her stalking and spying on him, and at one point even creating a note out of letters cut from a magazine that uttered obscenities and threats towards Prine and his new lover.  But this harassment would end three weeks later when Andrew Prine would be visited by the LAPD and asked to come with them to the police station.  The reason?  Because he was suspected for the murder of Karyn Kupcient.

On the night of Karyn’s death she spent the evening dining with Lost in Space star Mark Goddard and his wife Marcia.  During police questioning about her final days, the couple testified that Karyn was acting very odd the night that she died.  She was quite, cold and distance, hardly touching her food and her voice was coarse.  When Mark questioned her about her actions Karyn burst into tears and made up a strange story about a baby being left on her doorstep.  This story was a lie.  Karyn didn’t stay long and left the house by taxi cab at 8:30 pm and promised the Goddard’s that she would call them soon.

Returning to her apartment, she was paid a visit by two friends, writer Edward Stephen Rubin and actor Robert Hathaway.  The three watched The Danny Kaye Show, but Karyn fell asleep between her two visitors.  After the show was over the two men woke Karyn up, who went to her bedroom and the men turned off the television, locked her door and let themselves out.  They would be the last two people to see Karyn alive. 

Two days later, when Mark and Marcia Goddard had not heard from Karyn they went to her apartment to pay her a visit.  Despite being able to hear the television on inside, nobody was coming to the door.  Stating during his testimony that he had a strange foreboding feeling, Mark Goddard forced his way into the apartment where he and Marcia found Karyn's naked dead body on the couch.  Suspecting that she had died of a drug overdose, the Goddard’s called for help, but an investigation proved that it was not drugs that killed Karyn Kupcinet.  She had been strangled!

Andrew Prine was the primary suspect in the murder, but he was able to provide an alibi and was quickly cleared.  After a brief investigation, the case was closed and was unsolved.  Karyn’s family had her body flown to Illinois where she was laid to rest. 

However, Karyn’s story would not end here.  In 1967 JFK assassination consiprist Penn Jones Jr, in his book Forgive My Grief, theorized that Karyn Kupcinet was the identity of a mysterious caller that had called a telephone operator the day before JFK’s assassination from Oxnard, California stating that the president was going to be killed in Dallas.  Obviously someone in the LA area knew of the assassination well in advance.  It was known that Karyn’s father Irv Kupcinet was an acquaintance of mobster Jack Ruby, and it was theorized that Ruby had told Irv about the assassination, who in turn told Karyn.  Thus, in order to send a message to Irv Kupcinet to keep his trap shut about what he knew, Jack Ruby had Karyn murdered.  Sure, this is a far fetched idea, but it is interesting that a woman in the LA area knew in advance that JFK was going to be killed and she never spoke again.  Could the murder of Karyn Kupcinet have silenced that voice?

Of course Irv Kupcinet viciously denied this theory and stated that he had his own suspicions who murdered his daughter, but he never revealed his suspect because, as he said, he wasn’t able to prove it.  Irv would be forced to defend his daughter’s memory again in 1991 when Oliver Stone featured Karyn’s story as part of the film JFK.  Irv himself passed away in 2003 at the age of 91, taking with him his own theory as to who really killed his beloved little girl.  Thus, just as we’ll never truly know who was behind the assassination of JFK, we will also never know who killed Karyn Kupcinet.

Danny Lockin (1943-1977) While Danny Lockin isn’t the most memorable of the celebrities featured here; he is the one that is the most personal to me.  You see, when I was nine years old and just cutting my teeth on classic film, my favorite movie was Hello Dolly!  Catching it one evening on a PBS station, I had never seen a film that large in scale and that colorful before.  The music was fantastic, the dance numbers were enormous, the girls were wholesome and pretty and the men were well dressed and dashing.  I must have watched that film a hundred times, driving my parents crazy with each repeated viewing.  I knew every song by heart.  Yet, despite the fact that the film starred such pop culture icons as Barbara Streisand, Walter Mathieu and Michael Crawford, my favorite character was naïve and timid stock boy Barnaby Tucker, played by lively and charismatic dancer Danny Lockin.  Danny had all the best lines, and he got to put the squeeze on the lovely E.J. Peaker who played Minnie Faye, and who I had a giant crush on.  So imagine my horror decades later as an adult when I was doing searches for the cast of Hello Dolly!  and I discovered that Danny Lockin was the victim in a gruesome Hollywood murder.  The world never got to really know Danny Lockin, although I would never forget him.

Danny Lockin was the son of Omaha based dance instructor Jean Lockin, and began dancing professionally at the age of eight.  It was during this early age that Danny started his very first dance team with a boy named Neal Reynolds.  Danny, being white, and Neal, being black, were called The Two Checkers and performed dance routines, pantomime, impersonations and comedy routines all over the country.  However, as a result of Neal’s color, Danny experienced the hardships of bigotry early on, and for the rest of his life would be an advocate for civil rights.  Danny and Neal stayed together for nine years until Danny and his mother moved to Anaheim in 1959. 

As his mother set up another dance studio, Danny began to shop his music and dance talents around to different show business auditions.  He was awarded a small part in the 1962 film version of Gypsy with Natalie Wood, and was one of the finalists for the part of Rolfe in The Sound of Music, even filming a screen test featuring him singing “I Am Sixteen Going on Seventeen.”  Unfortunately he would lose the part to Daniel Truhitte.  Becoming disenchanted with Hollywood after losing The Sound of Music part, Danny moved to New York City after he graduated from high school and brought his dance skills to Broadway, quickly attracting the attention of casting directors.  Looking much younger then he actually was, Danny was cast primarily in the roles of younger men and was cast as Rolfe in the Broadway version of The Sound of Music and also as a Jet in West Side Story.  Eventually he found the part that he would be most famous for when he was cast as Barnaby Tucker in the Broadway version of Hello Dolly! opposite Betty Grable in the role of Dolly Levi.  The part must have been tailor made for him because Danny would go on to play Barnaby in six more productions opposite talents such as Ginger Rogers, Eve Arden and Ethel Merman.  Its no surprise that Danny would eventually catch the attention of Hollywood dancer and leading man Gene Kelly who was about to direct his own production of the play, and after thirteen grueling auditions, Danny won the role of Barnaby in Kelly's upcoming film version.  Apparently during the filming of Hello Dolly! Gene Kelly was hard on Danny, often challenging the dancer to new heights.  Yet the challenges paid off, and when watching the film Danny often defies gravity in his dance numbers.

Soon after winning the role in Hello Dolly! in 1966, Danny met and married another dancer named Cathy Haas and in 1969 they had a son together.  However, their marriage wouldn’t last and by the end of 1969 Cathy left Danny.  This devastated the young actor who had just seemed to be making a bit of headway in his career, and as a result Danny began to drink heavily.  However, questions of Danny’s sexuality would arise later on.  Both of these factors would play heavily in the events that would end his life. 

Returning to California for solace from the confusion in his life, Danny went back to teach dance at his mother’s studio.  Described as a popular teacher, with a boyish smirk and a glint in his eye, Danny was a favorite amongst pupils.  Danny went on to do some more television work, including a guest spot on Dean Martin’s summer replacement series Dean Martin Presents the Gold Diggers, which was actually hosted by Paul Lynde.  On the show he and his fellow Dolly co-star Tommy Tune, who played the role of Ambrose Kemper both in the film and on the stage, did a dance routine.  Yet, Danny’s next TV appearance would be his last.

On August 21^st, 1977 Danny performed on an episode of The Gong Show with another of his mother’s dance school’s instructors named Billie Jo Conway.  Danny, being small and slender, and Billie Jo, being a three hundred pound woman who was a fantastic tap dancer, were a hit with the audience and tied for first place.  Jean Lockin was in the audience, and as a result of Danny’s drivers license being suspended due to his increased drinking, she was expecting to drive him home.  However, Danny told his mother not to wait because he was going to be going out for a drink with friends.  Danny and his friends went to celebrate at a Garden Grove gay bar called The Mug, where he was seen leaving with a bar regular named Charles Leslie Hopkins.  Hopkins lived nearby and worked as a medical clerk.  This would be the last time Danny was seen alive.

Later that evening police were called to Charles Hopkins' apartment after a call of a disturbance was made by a neighbor.  When Hopkins came to the door, he claimed that a man had entered his apartment and had tried to rob him, but once entering the apartment police found the dead body of Danny Lockin.  Danny had been stabbed over one hundred times and accompanying his body was a torture diary filled with pornographic images and Polaroid’s featuring Danny.  The diary also revealed that Danny was known to his assailant before that night, and that the murder was premeditated.  Hopkins had every intention of ending Danny's life far in advance.  A coroner report actually reported that only six of the stab wounds were actually fatal, and that the other wounds were made solely for the purpose of torture.  Hopkins was immediately arrested and the evidence of Danny’s torture was secured and removed from the apartment.  Unfortunately, as a result of not obtaining a warrant before removing this evidence, prosecutors were not able to use the torture diary or Polaroids in court!

After a long delay, Charles Hopkins went to trial in September 1978, but there was no jury present.  The decision lay on the shoulders of the judge.  Hopkins stuck with an unlikely story that Danny had been at his apartment, but then had left, and when Hopkins woke up later Danny’s dead and mutilated body was just there and he didn’t know how it had got there or what had happened.  As a result of little public outcry about Danny’s murder due to the papers reporting little about it during an age when homosexuality was still a taboo subject, as well as what has been said to be a judge who figured that the crime was just a case of some sort of kinky gay sex game, Hopkins was charged with a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter!  As a result he only spent four years in prison for the torture and murder of a talented young man that the world hardly got to know.  Friends and family were devastated that the man who ended Danny's life so viciously would get off so light.  Justice was not served.  Charles Hopkins walks the streets today as a free man. 

Jean Lockin’s life was never the same after she lost her son.  She quickly folded her school and disappeared from Orange County.  However, Danny is still there under a marker that reads "Beloved Son.”

Thus ends the stories of three of Hollywood’s forgotten young actors.  Hopefully you who read this now will remember them for both their lives, as well as their deaths.  Remember, death follows us our entire life and the end is always closer then we might think.  For Peg, Karyn and Danny it came a bit too soon.  Perhaps they will never have been major stars in Hollywood, but let us keep them close to our minds and our hearts forever.

POP CULTURE ADDICT NOTE:  I would just like to thank Mr. Joseph Tatner for his help filling in some of the blanks in Danny Lockin’s story.  Joseph Tatner was a student at Danny’s mothers’ dance studio and kindly talked to me in 2006 about Danny’s life.  You can visit Joseph’s web-site and learn more about his career as both a stage and television actor at http://www.miracleproductions.org/joseph.  I also would like to also give a big thanks to Kathy Mechan who runs the Danny Lockin web-site for sharing information and photos.  She has been very valuable in helping me tell Danny's story, and doing a great job keeping Danny's memory alive.  Make sure to visit her site at http://dannylockin.com.

All content copyright Sam Tweedle 2006.