Dead in Hollywood is a true-crime web series of strange and tragic Hollywood deaths.
I'm premiering Dead in Hollywood: Stalked (Issue 7) at L.A. Zine Fest this weekend (May 27) at the Pasadena Convention Center. Stalked focuses on the tragic deaths of actresses Rebecca Schaeffer and Dominique Dunne, and "body model" Linda Sobek.
Raw footage from the North Hollywood Bank Shootout. It's nuts. You've been warned.
This past Saturday we found ourselves in North Hollywood. We stopped to pay our respects to the Bank of America on Laurel Canyon. It was the scene of one of the longest and bloodiest shootouts in American police history - changing forever how police dealt with bank robberies. I didn't know much about the North Hollywood Shootout - aka the Battle of North Hollywood - when I started researching the heist for issue #7.5 of Dead in Hollywood. The story is insane. I found myself staying up till 3AM watching the helicopter footage of the siege online. Get a copy of the zine above in the store.
Linda Sobek hits her stride as a “body model,” specializing in swimwear layouts, calendars, beer posters, and car magazines. She poses for Playboy and the Fredrick’s of Hollywood catalogue. “Linda was making it really big, staying really busy,” says L.A. calendar producer Roy Morales - theres such a thing as a calendar producer? Sobek lands a small part on the TV show “Married with Children.” She's hoping it’ll be her big break. Aside from her looks, Sobek's success is owed in big part to her dedication and professionalism. It is precisely because of Sobek’s reputation for being responsible and level-headed that her family begins to suspect that she might be in danger when she misses her costume fitting for "Married with Children.” Linda's story will be chronicled in the upcoming issue of Dead in Hollywood: Stalked.
"I'm a very happy person. I love life, I love my family, I love the beach and I want the world to be happy!”
-Linda Sobek
Praying for time.
O'Rourke plays Carol Anne in the horror film "Poltergeist" (1982). She utters the movie's most famous line: "They're here!" She reprises the role in the second and third installments. In February 1988 she dies at the age of 12 of cardiac arrest and septic shock caused by a misdiagnosed intestinal stenosis. The Poltergeist Curse strikes again...
I walk home from work past the street where Dominique Dunne lived - Rangely Ave. in West Hollywood. Dunne was strangled to death in the driveway of this home by her ex-boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney who served less than 4 years for her murder. I think about Dunne every time I pass by and since I started working on the next issue of Dead in Hollywood it has become a particularly poignant part of my walk. “Stalked" follows the lives of Dunne, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, and cheerleader/model Linda Sobek. All three women are stalked to their death by deranged men with criminal records. In death, these women are responsible for new laws that are put in place to protect stalking and domestic violence victims.
Dead in Hollywood will be tabling at this year's L.A. Zine Fest at the Pasadena Convention Center on May 27th! Stop by and talk dead celebs with me!
Margot Kidder (October 17, 1948 – May 13, 2018) rises to fame in 1978 for her role as Lois Lane in the “Superman” film series, alongside Christopher Reeve. Kidder says of her friendship with Reeves, "When you're strapped to someone hanging from the ceiling for months and months, you get pretty darned close.” Kidder also appears in two of my all time favorite horror movies "Black Christmas" and “The Amityville Horror.” Later in life, Kidder is known for her battle with mental illness. She is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which is the cause of a widely publicized manic episode in April 1996. Kidder had been working on an autobiography when a virus causes her computer to crash. She loses three years’ worth of drafts. She flies to LA and has her computer examined by a data retrieval company, who are unable to retrieve the files. Kidder then enters a manic state and disappears for four days. She is found in a backyard by a homeowner and is taken by the LAPD to Olive View Medical Center in a distressed state, the caps on her teeth having been knocked out during a rape attempt. Her cause of death has not been disclosed.
The American Film Institute ranks Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Crawford becomes one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest-paid women in America, but her films begin losing money and, by the end of the 1930s, she was labelled "box office poison." But she makes a major comeback in 1945 by starring in "Mildred Pierce," for which she wins the Academy Award for Best Actress - Crawford feigns illness before the 1946 Academy Award ceremony and accepts her Oscar in her bed, inviting the press to come into her bedroom to photograph her. In 1955, Crawford becomes involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford is elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors, serving until she is forcibly retired in 1973 - "Don't fuck with me fellas." Crawford marries four times. Her first three marriages end in divorce; the last ends with the death of husband Alfred Steele. She adopts five children, one of whom was reclaimed by his birth mother - California law prevented her from adopting within the state so she arranges the first adoption through an agency in Las Vegas. Crawford's relationships with her two elder children, Christina and Christopher, are acrimonious. Crawford disinherited the two, and, after Crawford's death, Christina writes a well-known "tell-all" memoir titled Mommie Dearest (1978) that forever tarnishes Crawford's legacy. On May 8, 1977, Crawford gives away her beloved Shih Tzu, "Princess Lotus Blossom," being too weak to care for her. Crawford dies two days later at her New York apartment of a heart attack.
Heading over to Lethal Amounts Gallery for the opening night of “Goodbye Pogo: The Art of John Wayne Gacy.” John Wayne Gacy was executed on May 10, 1990.
UPDATE: Even though we had tickets the line wrapped around the block and wasn't moving so we left. :(
So excited! My James Dean buttons arrived and they look so good! Check them out at our store. Link above! And they're only $1! Free shipping to anywhere in the world!
Dead in Hollywood will be tabling at LA Pages on May 20th! 10AM-6PM! Come talk to us about all things dead and Hollywood!
MAYRA'S BANQUET HALL 6075 S.Normandie Ave. LA, CA 90044
Actress Dana Plato is known playing the role of Kimberly Drummond on the TV show “Diff'rent Strokes,” from 1978 to 1986. After leaving “Diff'rent Strokes,” Plato attempts to establish herself as a working actress, with mixed success. “Diff'rent Strokes” debuts on NBC in 1978, becoming an immediate hit. The show features Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain), a wealthy white widower in New York City who adopts two black boys after their parents' deaths. Plato plays Kimberly, Drummond's teenage daughter. During her years on “Diff'rent Strokes,” Plato struggles with drug and alcohol problems. She admits to drinking alcohol, and using cannabis and cocaine, and she suffers an overdose of diazepam when she is only 14. On May 7, 1999, the day before she dies, Plato appears on “The Howard Stern Show.” She speaks about her life, discussing her financial problems and past run-ins with the law. She admits to being a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, but claims she has been sober for more than 10, and is not using any drugs. Callers to the show insult her and question her sobriety. The next day, Plato and her husband are returning to California and stop off at her husband’s mother's home in Moore, Oklahoma, for a Mother's Day visit. Plato goes to lie down inside her Winnebago motorhome parked outside the house, where she dies of an overdose of the painkiller Lortab and the muscle-relaxant Soma. Her death is eventually ruled a suicide. Her son kills himself almost exactly eleven years to the day after Plato's death.
"Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact." -Marlene Dietrich
David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich appear together in the 1978 movie "Just a Gigolo." "Gigolo" is a West German film starring David Bowie. It also features Sydney Rome, Kim Novak and, in her last screen appearance, Marlene Dietrich. The hostile reception the film receives leads Bowie to quip that it is "My 32 Elvis Presley movies rolled into one."
Marlene Dietrich's life is transformed in 1929 when she is cast as the tawdry cabaret singer who starts Emil Jannings on his descent into madness in the German film "The Blue Angel." American audiences are introduced to her in the film "Morocco," with Dietrich playing a wayward chanteuse who sings her first number in a gender-bending top hat and tails and kisses another woman full on the lips. Theater critic, Kenneth Peacock Tynan, describes Dietrich as “Sex without gender.” From the start her sexuality was at the core of her stardom. "Morocco" earns Dietrich her only Academy Award nomination.
Dietrich's show business career ends on September 29, 1975 when she falls off the stage and breaks her thigh during a performance in Sydney, Australia. The following year, her husband, Rudolf Sieber, dies of cancer. An alcoholic dependent on painkillers, Dietrich withdraws to her apartment at 12 Avenue Montaigne in Paris. She spends the final 11 years of her life mostly bedridden, allowing only a select few to enter the apartment. During this time, she is a prolific letter-writer and phone-caller. Her autobiography, Nehmt nur mein Leben (Take Just My Life), is published in 1979.
Albert Dekker is an American character actor and politician best known for his roles in "Dr. Cyclops," "The Killers," "Kiss Me Deadly," and "The Wild Bunch." On May 5, 1968, Dekker is found dead in his Hollywood apartment by his fiancée, fashion model and future "Love Boat" creator Jeraldine Saunders - "Love Boat" is based on her 1974 book "Love Boats," an anecdotal account of her time employed as the first full-time female cruise director. Saunders is still kicking ass at 94 as the author of "Omarr’s Astrological Forecast," a nationally syndicated horoscope column read by hundreds of thousands worldwide.
Back to Dekker... the circumstances of his death are super weird. He's found nude in his bathtub with a scarf over his eyes and a ball gag in his mouth. His hands are handcuffed behind his back - the key still in the cuffs. In addition to the leather belt around his neck, Dekker has an additional leather belt wrapped around his waist, which is tied to a rope that also ties his two ankles together and is wrapped around his wrist and clasped in his hand. He also has two hypodermic needles sticking out of his arms and two hypodermic punctures on his right butt cheek. Above these puncture wounds are the words “whip” written on his butt cheek in lipstick, and a drawing of the sun. Lipstick is used to write all over Dekker’s naked body, including “make me suck,” “slave,” and “cocksucker.” There are also drawings of sun rays around his nipples and a picture of a vagina on his lower abdomen. The initial ruling is suicide, but after S&M pornography and bondage equipment is found in the apartment, the ruling is changed to accidental death caused by autoerotic asphyxiation
Could Dekker have really gotten himself in that position all on his own? Saunders believes there had to be someone else involved. She knows that Dekker was keeping $70,000 in cash hidden in his apartment, but the money was never found. A bunch of camera equipment is also missing. The most baffling aspect of Dekker’s death is that the bathroom door is locked with a chain from the inside and there are no other exits - there are no windows in his bathroom.
It's pretty obvious that Dekker had a private life that he kept from everyone including his fiancée. When she hadn't heard from Dekker in a couple of days, Saunders would show up at his apartment and leave notes taped to his door, asking him to contact to her.
Dekker's most famous for his role in the movie, "Dr. Cyclopes." Tagline: "The Thrill of the Year!"
