Considerably cut down (for copyright reasons) from the L.A. Times:
Suzy Parker, one of the fashion world’s legendary beauties who became the industry’s highest-paid cover girl in the 1950s, has died. She was 69. Parker, who parlayed her modeling fame into a short-lived Hollywood acting career, died Saturday after a lengthy illness at her home in Montecito, where she and her husband, actor Bradford Dillman, have lived since the late 1960s.
During her modeling heyday, Parker was photographed in Paris, Rome, London and New York City in fashions by all the top designers. Parker was a favorite subject of fashion photographer Richard Avedon, who used one of his photographs of Parker on the cover of his 2001 book “Made in France,” a collection of his work. It was Avedon who introduced Parker to director Stanley Donen in Paris. Parker was one of three Paris models who appeared in Donen’s stylized 1957 musical “Funny Face,” starring Fred Astaire as a fashion photographer who transforms Audrey Hepburn into an elegant model.
On Donen’s recommendation, 20th Century Fox gave Parker a screen test for her first leading role: in Donen’s 1957 comedy “Kiss Them for Me,” starring Cary Grant. She appeared in only a few other films, including “The Best of Everything” (1959), “Circle of Deception” (1960), “The Interns” (1962) and “Chamber of Horrors” (1966). Parker also made guest appearances in a number of television series in the '60s, including “The Twilight Zone,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Burke’s Law,” “Tarzan” and “It Takes a Thief.”
Addie McPhail, a former Hollywood actress who became the third and last wife of scandal-plagued silent-film comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, has died. She was 97. She was 26 and had nearly seven years as an actress in low-budget comedy short subjects and feature films behind her when she married the 45-year-old Arbuckle in 1932. The rotund, baby-faced actor had been one of Hollywood’s top funny men. But in 1921, he was charged with the murder of a young actress, Virginia Rappe, who died of peritonitis resulting from a ruptured bladder four days after collapsing in Arbuckle’s bedroom during a party in his San Francisco hotel suite.
In 1923, after three trials — the first two resulted in hung juries — Arbuckle was acquitted of the reduced charge of manslaughter because of lack of evidence. In a statement, the jury said, “We feel a great injustice has been done him.” They were married on the road by a justice of the peace in Erie, Pa., in June 1932.
A year later, Arbuckle had completed a successful series of comedy shorts and Warner Bros. had signed him to make a feature film when he and McPhail attended a party at a New York City restaurant in honor of their first wedding anniversary. While getting into bed after returning to their hotel late that night, Arbuckle was laughing about something that had been said earlier in the evening. McPhail continued talking from the bathroom; when she emerged she called out to her husband. He didn’t answer. “He was very peaceful,” she said. “He looked as if he had fallen asleep. Then I realized he was dead.” Arbuckle’s death from a heart attack at age 46, McPhail said, left her “feeling devastated for a long while.” But she believed that “Roscoe died happy. He was with a girl who loved him and Hollywood had forgiven him and welcomed him back.”
She was born Addie Dukes on July 15, 1905, in White Plaines, Ky. Her father was in the insurance business and the family relocated frequently. In 1911, they settled for a long period in Chicago. In 1925, the family moved to Hollywood. “I had already decided that I wanted to be an actress, so I thought this move was fate,” McPhail told the Guardian. “I was a stranger in Hollywood so it was only my appearance that opened doors, although they never opened very wide,” McPhail said. “Maybe I was never the actress I wanted to be.” Over the next few years, she appeared in numerous films, including two Universal comedy series, “The Newlyweds” and “Keeping Up With the Joneses,” whose titles included “Keeping in Trim,” “Showing Off,” “Indoor Golf” and “Her Only Husband.”
McPhail later spent many years as a volunteer nurse at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home in Woodland Hills, where many residents remembered her from her Hollywood days. “When I reminded Norma Shearer, Caryl Lincoln, Viola Dana, Stepin Fetchit and others who I was,” she told the Guardian, “they would always smile and say something good about Roscoe.”