The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (20 page)

It would be fair to say that Dane knew he had made a mistake almost as soon as the ring had been slipped on to his fiancée’s finger, and the pair separated after just six tumultuous months. Another relationship would come in 1928, with a Russian dancer, Thais Valdemar, but although they lived together for several months in Dane’s home, their union was never officially sealed and Valdemar soon moved out.

For the moment Karl gave up on women and instead threw himself into his career. One of his successes came when he began work on
The Big Parade
with John Gilbert, a film which went on to make $6.5 million at the box office – a staggering amount of money at the time. This film boosted his career no end and it was not long before he had advanced to parts acting alongside the legendary Rudolph Valentino in
The Son of the Sheik
and Lillian Gish in
The Scarlet Letter
.

Great stardom came when Dane was cast alongside actor George K. Arthur to create a comedy duo, and together they appeared in both films and a vaudeville tour. They were a huge hit and fans followed them around the country while many newspaper articles were written about their work. Sadly, however, the walls were slowly but surely coming in on their success with the advent of sound, and it was not long before the requirement for the infamous test came knocking at Dane and Arthur’s door.

During the subsequent sound tests, producers were happy to see that although Arthur’s Scottish accent was rather unfortunate, it was still workable. Dane didn’t have the same luck, however, when it was decided that his Danish accent was too thick and often could not be understood. Subsequently, the duo’s days as a successful double act were numbered and they eventually parted in 1931.

Dane continued to struggle in the movie business, and by December 1932, his last film was released -
The Whispering Shadow
featuring Bela Lugosi. Unfortunately, however, after that film was complete, nobody seemed to want to hire the actor any more and he had to accept the fact that his beloved career might be over. Not afraid to undertake any kind of work that would ensure his livelihood, Dane then tried his hand at various other jobs, including forming a mining company, and working as a waiter and then as a carpenter.

He even tried going back to mechanics, the work he had done as a young man in Nebraska, but having only recently been a big MGM star, it was inevitable that no “normal” job would ever work out to his advantage. Both Dane and his colleagues found it exceptionally hard to adjust to having a film star in the workplace, and ultimately he was left unemployed. Lonely and without any means of support, Dane spent his time pottering around his apartment, thinking about old times and wondering if he would ever find acting work again. In those bleak, dark days, the likelihood seemed very far-fetched indeed.

In 1933, when he was down but not yet out, Karl Dane bought a drink-and-sandwich stand, and every day wheeled it down the road to stand outside MGM, the studio he had formerly called home. Once there, the sad ex-star would try to sell hotdogs and refreshments to passers-by, though he was left intimidated and embarrassed when his former friends refused to buy anything from him. It took strength and nerve to try selling hotdogs outside his former workplace, and perhaps deep in his heart he was spurred on by the hope that his former employers would see the stall and have the heart to hire him back.

But even though they were driven past his cart every single day, the executives neither invited him back into the studio nor ever bought anything from him. Dane was still determined to make a living, but the lack of custom inevitably caused his business to fail. He gave up the stand and went back to odd jobs, even applying at MGM to become an extra or labourer – he didn’t mind which. However, it would seem that the great studio wanted nothing more to do with their former star in any capacity, and this knowledge caused Dane to fall into a deep and dark depression.

In April 1934, Karl Dane was understandably at a very low ebb. On 13 April he was robbed of what was to be the last of his money, and this seems to have been the event that caused his life to finally implode. The very next day, instead of meeting a friend as he had previously planned, he decided to retire to his apartment at 626 South Burnside Avenue. There he dressed himself in a shirt, trousers and slippers, and sat down to write a goodbye note to his remaining friends.

That done, Dane then took out his old newspaper articles, contracts, photographs and reviews, and looked through them one last time. Only he knows how long he thumbed through his past achievements before finally laying them down on a nearby table, reaching for his revolver and ending his life with a single gunshot to the head. Dane’s body was later found by his landlady and the friend who was supposed to meet him that day. There was nothing they could do for the former actor; he was beyond saving.

Newspapers mentioned Karl Dane’s tragic passing only in short articles, limited to one or two small columns. There was no real tribute to the once great star; no huge obituary or tearful comments from former co-stars. To make matters worse, no one came forward to claim the body since his family were all unaware of his death and living thousands of miles away in Denmark.

Reports surfaced that if the body was not claimed, he would be buried by the county in a pauper’s grave; and with that announcement, people finally began to sit up and take notice. No matter what had happened in Dane’s career at the end, there was no denying that he was once a big star and the thought of him being buried in an unmarked grave with no proper goodbye was horrifying.

Finally, a decision was made at MGM to take charge of the funeral themselves; while they had spurned their former employee just months before, they now proudly announced their plans to the press. Karl’s funeral took place on 18 April and was a quiet but respectful affair. The goodbye – which nobody had been interested in just weeks before – now consisted of a plot at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, a casket covered in roses and the help of Dane’s co-stars as pall-bearers.

The tragic twist in the tale of the Karl Dane story is that just days after his death, it was revealed that Fox had been considering him for a part in their upcoming movie,
Servants’ Entrance
. The only reason they had not told him, they said, was because the script was still in development and the casting had not yet been called.

In life, Lou-Tellegen was the idol of many women and his love life was the talk of the town, often causing scandals in the press. However, ultimately his memory is kept alive not for the things he did in life, but for the tragic and unfortunate way he decided to take his own life after his star had begun to fade . . .

Born on 26 November 1883, Lou-Tellegen (the hyphen was intentional, though very rarely used) was a Dutch actor who was discovered by renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1910. Lou (real name Isadore Louis Bernard Edmon van Dommelen) had endured a somewhat chequered career in Europe as a book salesman (which led to him being imprisoned for selling a “scandalous” book), circus performer, model and baker, before being introduced to the aging Bernhardt, who promptly booked him for an American tour on which she was about to embark.

The chiselled, athletic performer left behind an ex-wife, Countess Jeanne de Brouckère, their daughter, Diane, and countless broken hearts, and together with Bernhardt, with whom he was rumoured to be having an affair, travelled to the United States for the first time. Whether or not Tellegen was nervous about leaving Europe and travelling to a far-off country is not known, but in any case the tour was such a success that he decided to move to the United States permanently. From then on he put every effort into making a name for himself as an actor in numerous stage productions and movies such as
The Explorer
and
The Unknown
(both 1915).

As his star began to rise, Lou-Tellegen was lusted after by many women both on and off stage, but in 1915, rumours started to circulate that he had stolen the heart of opera sensation Geraldine Farrar, after meeting her on a Hollywood film set. For a long time they denied the affair, and though friends insisted it was serious, the only thing Tellegen would say was the extremely uninteresting, “I’m ignoring such a report.”

Reporters were intrigued by his denials and the story of their romance was made even more tantalizing because of Geraldine’s views on marriage which she gave during an interview with an overeager reporter in 1908. Desperate to discover if she had love in her life, the reporter asked Farrar if there was a wedding on the horizon, to which the outspoken woman announced that a singer must give up all idea of matrimony until she had become successful in her field. She truly believed, she said, that one could not be a good wife and mother and a good student at the same time. “One must be subordinated,” she declared.

Rumours circulated that Farrar had once called a potential suitor – an unnamed member of royalty – a “silly boy” because of his eagerness to marry her, and in 1914 made her feelings extremely clear when she described romance as like a big bag of cakes. “After I have begun to nibble the cake with the pink icing I think perhaps I should rather have the cake with the green filling still in the bottom of the bag,” she said, before going on to add that this way of thinking would never be acceptable within a marriage: “I’d have only one cake with the pink icing for ever and ever,” she lamented.

Despite her negative views, Farrar surprised everyone – particularly herself – when she finally accepted Tellegen’s proposal, and the two became man and wife on 8 February 1916. Unfortunately, the marriage was troublesome and it was not aided by their conflicting schedules, though Farrar later revealed that when she asked Tellegen if he expected her to give up her career, he answered, “I would not dream of it. I do not understand how any man can make such a demand of a woman.”

He also declared himself immensely proud of his opera-singing wife, which impressed his wife no end. Speaking to journalist Nixola Greeley-Smith, Farrar declared, “I have known men of all nations and I find that they are all charming until they get some sort of hold on a woman. And then they begin to try to put her in their pockets. That would never do with me.” When asked how their marriage was so successful, she replied, “We are very, very happy. The secret? Good comradeship, I think. And of course, similar tastes, an equal interest in art and complete confidence in each other.”

Unfortunately it would seem that the singer was holding something back in the interview, and in spite of claims of similar tastes and interests, it was not enough to keep the couple together. Not long after the interview with Greeley-Smith, Lou-Tellegen and Geraldine Farrar separated, with the divorce becoming final in December 1923.

Despite his bad luck in relationships, Tellegen’s star continued to rise and he found admiration not only as an actor, but also as a writer, sculptor, athlete and linguist, being able to speak six different languages. 1924 and 1925 were his most productive years, with an impressive sixteen film roles in such movies as
With this Ring, Womanpower
and
Parisian Love
. These were quite appropriate titles considering he was fast becoming known as an Adonis – something which often overshadowed his dramatic talents – and was linked to many attractive women. The next woman fully to win his heart was Isabel Craven Dilworth, a society girl who acted under the name of Nina Romano. They married just days after his divorce from Geraldine Farrar, but they kept it secret from the public for almost eighteen months.

“Oh, but I did not keep it a secret for unworthy reasons,” Tellegen told columnist Alma Whitaker in 1925. Nor did he admit to staying quiet for anything resembling “professional expedience”. Instead, he disclosed that the real reason they had not gone public with their marriage was because they had sealed their relationship so close to the end of his marriage to Geraldine Farrar that “we dreaded the publicity so hard upon the heels of the other”.

In spite of keeping the marriage close to their chest, the couple found it astonishing that they were never asked about their relationship, even after having a child together. Tellegen would take the child out in the pram, and find it extremely confusing as to why no one ever asked whose baby it was, and if he indeed was the father. “They never seemed to question it,” he told a newspaper reporter. Still, the couple were not in any rush to announce their marriage, and when they moved to Beverly Hills shortly before being “found out”, they actually acquired two different homes in an effort to keep their relationship secret for as long as possible. This they understandably found tiresome and inconvenient at best, and expensive at worse. “I don’t quite know why we did that,” commented Tellegen.

Once the news was finally out of the bag, the couple declared themselves to be happy, with Tellegen announcing that life was “more enchanting every year!” However, by 1928 his movie career had slowed right down and rumours were rife that the two were to divorce. This prompted Romano to deny any rift by declaring that they were both extremely happy, but complained that if anyone was out to ruin the relationship, it was the press. “They just won’t leave us alone,” she said.

Less than two years later, the newspaper gossip was proved correct when the marriage broke up and the two went their separate ways. However, that didn’t happen until they had gone through a very sticky divorce which resulted in accusations that Tellegen had been unfaithful and had told his wife he was now living with another woman. Who the secret lover was mystified the ever-present reporters, but their attentions soon shifted from the actor’s love life and on to his personal health, when an almost catastrophic disaster struck.

On Christmas Day 1929, Lou fell asleep in his room at Atlantic City’s Hotel Jefferson, with a cigarette in his hand. Needless to say, it was not long before it had burned all the way down to the bed covers and the room filled with smoke; fumes overcame Tellegen, who was still asleep on the now flaming bed. Meanwhile, other guests in the hotel became aware that there was a distinct smell of smoke wafting its way through the corridors and notified the management, who came running to Tellegen’s room. Unable to get any answer from the actor at all, and with smoke by now seeping out underneath the door, the staff forced their way into the room just in time to find his bed ablaze and the actor unconscious. An ambulance was called and Tellegen was rushed to hospital where it was found that the lower half of his torso had been badly burned, though his injuries were thankfully not serious.