Salacious rumors are either not mentioned or debunked when too prevalent to ignore. Not excessively hagiographic (except where it's deserved-as in the cases of Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and James Dean), the authors are generally positive about their subjects, taking an understanding view of their marital and drug problems. While the accounts are arranged alphabetically in separate sections for different causes of death (medical problems, suspected foul play, actual murder, alcohol or other drugs, suicide after broken heart, bizarre accidents), readers will find it easier to get the lowdown by using the index or the summary table that precedes it. Most entries are a single page all include photos of the artist in iconic roles or poses.

Hundreds of photos, many in color.Ī team of eight writers (mostly Australian, all film historians of various sorts) compiled this addictively readable anthology of over 250 Hollywood obituaries, from early stars like John Barrymore and Will Rogers to more contemporary artists like Spalding Gray and Christopher Reeve. The tragic stories of many Hollywood personalities are told in Cut!, the definitive volume on the fleeting lives of movie celebrities, some of whom became more famous in death than they had been in life. Car wrecks, plane crashes, and other deadly accidents sent Jayne Mansfield, Grace Kelly, and Carole Lombard, to untimely deaths, and accidents occurring during film production have taken several lives, perhaps the most dramatic being the helicopter crash that killed Vic Morrow in 1983. Here too are stories about celebrities who died young because of alcohol or drug-related problems-John Belushi and Elvis Presley among many others-and of the tragic 1998 murder of comedian Phil Hartman.

Here are accounts of the sudden, premature deaths of stars like Rudolph Valentino, Montgomery Clift, and Peter Sellers. This heavily illustrated book recounts these and many other tragic events that have haunted the Hollywood movie community from its early-twentieth-century beginnings to the present day. Among its stars, James Dean was soon killed in a car crash, Sal Mineo died several years later, murdered by an unknown assailant, and the beautiful Natalie Wood died mysteriously when she fell from a docked pleasure boat and drowned. Rebel Without a Cause was one of the most talked-about movies of the 1950s.

Cut! by Denise Imwold