Hollywood Whodunnits

While Hollywood is considered the home of cinema and the place where everyone goes to find fame and fortune for some that fame didn't always work out the way that they expected it to.

Over the years a string of actors, some more high profile that others, have lost their lives and their deaths are still surrounded in mystery.

Actor George Reeves was at the height of his fame in the fifties when he took on the role of Superman in the long running American television series when he was found dead on June 16 1959.

He died of a single gunshot wound to the head and went down as suicide. Once urban legend was Reeves believed that he had Superman's powers and had killed himself trying to fly.

However there were always some suspicions surrounding his death with many believing then, and many years that he would never have taken his own life and no powder from the gun was found on the actor's skin.

Despite several theories and investigations, and more recently a film entitled Hollywoodland, the verdict of suicide has never been disproved.

Marilyn Monroe was Hollywood's golden girl starring in movies as Some Like It Hot and The Seven Year Itch and her sudden death at the age of thirty six rocked Hollywood.

Monroe was found dead at her Brentwood, California home on 5th August 1962 by her housekeeper Eunice Murray and her death was ruled as 'acute barbiturate poisoning' which was recorded as 'probable suicide'.

However lack of evidence led to her death not being classified as either suicide or murder. But over the years the rumour and conspiracy mill has always rumbled on and John and Robert Kennedy have been implicated in her death, as were the Mafia and the CIA.

Elizabeth Short was the victim of one of the must gruesome, publicised and unsolved murders in Los Angeles. The starlet was just twenty two when, on January 15, 1947 her body was discovered in Leimert Park.

Her body was severely mutilated, drained of blood and her face was slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears. She received the nickname of 'Black Dahlia' which was related to the movie at the time The Black Dahlia. The investigation into her death was the largest since the 1927 murder of Marion Parker.

Despite some links to the Cleveland Torso Murders no one was ever charged for her murder but there have been a series of books and TV and movie adaptations of her murder.

Director Paul Bern's movie Grand Hotel had won the Best Picture Oscar not long before he was found naked and shot in the head on July2, 1932, just two months after marrying actress Jean Harlow, twenty two years his senior.

At first it was believed that he has committed suicide after finding a note however it was later discovered that the note was instead a note he had written weeks earlier to his wife to apologise for a fight.

However it has been suggested that he was married by Dorothy Millette, his common law wife, who committed suicide two days later by jumping of a ferryboat.

Other murders that have always been shrouded in secrecy include director William Desmond Taylor, director ThomasH Ince, and actress Thelma Todd.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw