Michael Jace who’s probably best known from The Shield was convicted of second-degree murder of his wife in 2014.
It seems not many celebrities (in the US anyway) have been convicted of an actual murder charge. Celebrities love to kill people (both before and after they became celebrities), but not a lot of actual murder convictions that stood up.
I couldn’t finish the Cohen’s Hail Caesar, not only because it had become tedious by the time of the “would that it were” scene, but because it was a waste of all the potential a movie about MGM’s fixer Eddie Mannix could be.
Anyway, Wallace Berry was a hateful person, nobody would invite him back to their home a second time, etc. and he and two other bastards beat Ted Healy so badly that he died a few days later, and the studio bribed the coroner to cover it up.
Biggest racists awards go to Eugene Pallette and Charles Coburn, who even back in the 1950’s, when everyone was cowed rightward by HUAC and Red Channels, still managed to spout hate to the extent that Hollywood shunned them.
Which is- in this nation- not guilty. Still, there are doubts -
During the interview, broadcast in November 2003, she admitted that the prosecutors had no forensic evidence implicating Blake in the murder and that they could not tie him to the murder weapon.[41]
### Trial and acquittal
Blake’s criminal trial for murder began on December 20, 2004, with opening statements by the prosecution and opening statements by the defense the following day.[41] The prosecution contended that Blake intentionally murdered Bakley to free himself from a loveless marriage, while the defense claimed that Blake was an innocent victim of circumstantial and fabricated evidence. McLarty and Hambleton each testified that Blake had asked them to murder Bakley. On cross-examination, the defense brought up McLarty’s mental health problems and Hambleton’s criminal history. The lack of gunshot residue on Blake’s hands was a key part of the defense’s case that Blake was not the shooter. Blake chose not to testify.[42]
On March 16, 2005, Blake was found not guilty of murder and not guilty of one of the two counts of solicitation of murder. The other count, for solicitation to commit murder, was dropped after it was revealed that the jury was deadlocked 11–1 in favor of an acquittal.
The two witnesses were very doubtful, and the lack of gunshot residue pretty well mean he didnt pull the trigger. Still, it does seem Blake talked about having his wife killed.
He was also certifiably nuts. After the end of WWII, he became convinced a nuclear war was going to break out so he left Hollywood and moved to a remote and inaccessible part of the Pacific Northwest outside of Imnaha, Oregon. There, Pallette set up a compound with a cattle ranch, a lumber mill, and a small canning operation. However, he only lasted two years before selling everything and moving back to Hollywood.
William S Burroughs shot his wife Joan Vollmer in the head during a party, alleged to do a “William Tell trick”. Both were extremely drunk and possibly under the influence of other substances.
He later claimed he had dropped the gun and it had gone off accidentally. He spent two weeks in jail before his brother turned up (this happened in Mexico) and bribed officials and prosecutors to release him on bail. He eventually skipped the country and was convicted of homicide in absentia.
Burroughs was an interesting fellow in all sorts of ways, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have wanted to spend much time in a room with him.
There’s a probably apocryphal story of someone (a minor celebrity?) pulling the “Do you know who I am?!!” routine at the check-in gate in an airport.
The airline employee turns on the terminal PA microphone and annouces something like: “Attention, please! We have a passenger at Gate 14 who does not know who is. If any party is missing a confused person who does not know who is, please report to Gate 14 to identify him.”
This was the first thing I thought of when hearing this type of stories. I know people who prefer their food salty (including one friend who continued to oversalt his food despite being told by his doctor that he needed to limit his salt consumption). I generally taste food at a restaurant before adding salt or pepper, particularly if it’s something I haven’t tried there before, because I don’t know how the chef prepares it.
Yes he did have an entire hidden family ( In the Dakotas?) I never read anything about his will though/
My memory is that his will exposed his hidden family to his original family and he obviously knew that once he died, all of this would come out.
Not a fun way to learn what he had done.
Jim Gordon. Pretty well-known session musician who worked with a lot of major acts in the 60s to late 70s. Killed his mother, and even though diagnosed with schizophrenia he was sentenced to 16 years to life.
I thought an actor from The 40-Year-Old Virgin was a murderer, but apparently Shelley Malil’s victim survived being stabbed 23 times.
Walter Brennan was known to be a rabid racist and anti-semite.
I got a bit confused when a search on the name brought up both him and Wallace Beery (uncle of Noah Beery Jr., Rocky in the Rockford Files); he was almost as bad a piece of work apparently, raping his own bride Gloria Swanson (he 30, she 17) on their wedding night and then forcing her to take an abortifacient afterwards.
Oh (as I read his Wp page). Turns out this spelling was the Ted Healy conspiracist, not Berry, who was apparently a peaceful classical composer and professor.
So was Eugene Pallette. Almost forgotten these days, he was the gravel-voiced heavcy-set actor who played Friar Tuck to Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood, and Friar Felipe in his Mark of Zorro. He was convinced that Hitler (who he admired) would win WWII, wouldn’t sit next to a black actor, and later became a survivalist after the end of WWII, convinced that the US would be subject to an atomic attack.
I hadn’t heard that about Walter Brennan.
Having just watched the Saturday Night movie, I noted with interest that Milton Berle is portrayed as being a total jerk to none other than…Chevy Chase!
Milton Berle was known for two things. The other thing was being an asshole.
Correct. I think the general vibe was that, having been hugely popular in early television, he believed he was a genuine comedic/entertainment genius.
The only thing I ever saw him in that was funny in the least was Mad, Mad, Mad, World. And he is genuinely entertaining in that movie. He clearly took the direction of Stanley Kramer.
If you want to watch something truly embarrassing, watch his workout video where he:
does not work out at all, but directs others
dresses up like Jane Fonda, still thinking he is funny dressed as a woman. He isn’t.
has a cooking segment where he can not keep his hands off the young lady chef, who clearly can not stand this creepy old man
Funnily enough, I was just reading about Berle’s appearance as a guest villain on Batman, and Yvonne Craig (Batgirl) described him as a “delight” to work with.
Rudy Vallee appeared in that season as well, and everyone hated him.
Good grief:
Life imprisonment = eight years, apparently.
He was… by the standards of early television. And then in the early '50s the country’s tastes moved on and his show waned. Fortunately for him, he’d gotten NBC to sign him to a 30-year exclusive television contract at a million dollars a year, so that undoubtedly eased the heartbreak of having his show cancelled in 1956.