The Eskimo who was showcased in Robert Flaherty’s classic 1922 documentary Nanook of the North died of starvation two years after it completed filming. The great Barrymore acting family experienced a little known strange, early death when John Drew died at only thirty-four on after tripping and hitting his head during a birthday party for his daughter. Mary Pickford’s other sibling, Lottie, was a society partyer like her brother, and died of a supposed heart attack (attributed in large part to her excessive drinking) at just He was saved from a dishonorable discharge thanks to the intercession of his famous sister.
He also became embroiled in a scandal involving wealthy young men bribing military officers in exchange for soft positions far from the fields of battle during the World War I era. Trouble seemed to follow Jack Pickford everywhere. The official narrative went that she reached for sleeping pills and accidentally grabbed a convenient bottle of bichloride of mercury instead. Another of Pickford’s wives was gorgeous Olive Thomas, who died under suspicious circumstances at just twenty-one in a Paris hotel room. One of her husbands was the similarly ill-fated Jack Pickford, brother of America’s Sweetheart, who died at thirty-six after multiple bouts of syphilis and years of excessive drinking. One of Donahue’s handful of parts was opposite the incredibly star-crossed Marilyn Miller, in 1930’s Miller was a Broadway legend, who made only three motion pictures before succumbing to, believe it or not, chronic sinus infections, at the tender age of thirty-seven. Eleven years later, Donahue died in his home state of Massachusetts on his forty- forth birthday of undisclosed causes. His screen credits abruptly ended in 1932, when he was only thirty-three. Actor Joe Donahue had some juicy roles during his mysteriously brief film career. Keystone Kops comedian Fred Mace died from a stroke at only thirty-nine-years-old, which was apparently brought on from stress over being unemployed.
He appeared in countless solely uncredited roles from that point on. Harron’s precipitous career decline was as perplexing as his death the promising young leading man was an uncredited player by 1936.
The younger Harron died quite suddenly in 1939 at only thirty-six, from spinal meningitis. John Harron, best remembered as the romantic lead in 1932’s horror classic White was the brother of silent screen star Robert Harron, whose own “accidental” shooting death in 1920 rocked the film colony. The list of personal tragedies in show business is far, far longer than any recounting of rags to riches success stories. Griffith lamented, “I thought I was a great genius.” Seven years earlier, the already forgotten film legend was asked what he thought of young Orson Welles’ Citizen Griffith replied that he “particularly loved the ideas he took from me.” ON THE EVE of his death, living all alone in a cheap hotel, D.W. If these people didn’t live intense and rather disordered lives, if their emotions didn’t ride them too hard- well, they wouldn’t be able to catch those emotions in flight and imprint them on a few feet of celluloid or project them across the footlights.” “But show business has always been like that - any kind of show business.