Peg Entwistle

Peg Entwistle
Peg Entwistle in 1931
Born	Millicent Lilian Entwistle 5 February 1908(1908-02-05) Port Talbot, Wales, UK
Died	16 September 1932(1932-09-16) (aged 24)[1] Hollywood, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1925–1932

Peg Entwistle (5 February 1908 – body found 18 September 1932) was an English stage and screen actress who gained notoriety after her suicide at the age of 24 by leaping off of the Hollywood Sign.

Early life

Born Millicent Lilian Entwistle in Port Talbot, Wales to English parents, Robert Symes and Emily (née Stevenson) Entwistle, she spent her early life in West Kensington, London.^[2] Her mother Emily died when she was very young and her father remarried. In March 1916, when she was eight, the family emigrated to America through Liverpool aboard the SS Philadelphia and settled in New York City.^[3] Her father's second wife also died and in 1922 he was killed by a hit-and-run driver. She and her two younger half-brothers were taken in by their uncle, who had come with them to New York and was the manager of Broadway actor Walter Hampden.^[4]

Broadway

In 1925 Entwistle was living in Boston as a student of Henry Jewett's Repertory (now called The Huntington Theatre) and was one of the Henry Jewett Players, who were gaining national attention. Walter Hampden gave Entwistle an uncredited walk-on part in his Broadway production of Hamlet which starred Ethel Barrymore.^[5] She carried the King's train and brought in the poison-cup.^[6]

Entwistle later played the role of "Hedvig" in Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck. After seeing the play Bette Davis told her mother "...I want to be exactly like Peg Entwistle."^[7] Some years later Broadway director Blanche Yurka sent a note to Davis asking if she would like to play Hedvig and she sent word back that ever since she had seen Entwistle in The Wild Duck, she knew she would someday play Hedvig. Through the years Davis said Entwistle was her inspiration to take up acting.^[7]

By 1926 Entwistle had been recruited by the New York Theatre Guild and her first credited Broadway performance was in June of that year, as "Martha" in The Man from Toronto, which opened at The Selywn Theatre and ran for 28 performances.^[8] Entwistle performed in ten Broadway plays as a member of the Theatre Guild between 1926 and 1932, working with noted actors such as George M. Cohan, William Gillette, Bob Cummings, Dorothy Gish, Hugh Sinclair, Henry Travers and Laurette Taylor. Her longest-running play was the 1927 hit Tommy in which she starred with Sidney Toler, which ran for 232 performances and became the play for which she was most remembered.^[9]

In April 1927 Entwistle married actor Robert Keith at the chapel of the New York City Clerk's office.^[10] She was granted a divorce in May 1929. Along with charges of cruelty, she claimed her husband did not tell her he had been married before and was the father of a six-year-old boy, Brian Keith (who later became an actor).^[9][11]

The play The Uninvited Guest closed after only seven performances in September 1927, however New York Times critic J. Brooks Atkinson wrote, "...Peg Entwistle gave a performance considerably better than the play warranted."^[12]

She went on tour with the Theater Guild between Broadway productions. Changing characters every week, Entwistle garnered some publicity, such as an article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times in 1927^[6] and another in the Oakland Tribune two years later.^[13]

Aside from a part in the suspense drama Sherlock Holmes and The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner and her desire to play more-challenging roles Entwistle was often cast as a comedienne, most often the attractive, good-hearted ingénue. In 1929 she told a reporter:

"I would rather play roles that carry conviction. Maybe it is because they are the easiest and yet the hardest things for me to do. To play any kind of an emotional scene I must work up to a certain pitch. If I reach this in my first word, the rest of the words and lines take care of themselves. But if I fail I have to build up the balance of the speeches, and in doing this the whole characterization falls flat. I feel that I am cheating myself. I don't know whether other actresses get this same reaction or not, but it does worry me."^[13]

In early 1932 Entwistle made her last Broadway appearance in J.M. Barrie's Alice Sit-by-the-Fire,^[14] which also starred Laurette Taylor, whose alcoholism led to two missed evening performances and refunds to ticket-holders.^[15][16] The show was cancelled and in the aftermath Entwistle along with the other players were given only a week's salary, rather than a percentage of the box office gross which had been agreed upon before the show opened.^[17]

Hollywood

By May 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Entwistle was in Los Angeles with a role in the Romney Brent play The Mad Hopes starring Billie Burke,^[18] which ran from May 23 to June 4 at the Belasco theater in downtown Los Angeles. Theatre critic Flo Lawrence commented:

"...Belasco and Curran have staged the new play most effectively and have endowed this Romney Brent opus with every distinction of cast and direction. (producer) Bela Blau ... has developed the comedy to its highest points. Costumes and settings are of delightful quality, and every detail makes the production one entirely fit for its translation to the New York stage. In the cast Peg Entwistle and Humphrey Bogart hold first place in supporting the star (Billie Burke) and both give fine, serious performances. Miss Entwistle as the earnest, young daughter (Geneva Hope) of a vague mother and presents a charming picture of youth..."^[19]

Thirteen Women

After The Mad Hopes closed Entwistle found her first and only credited film role, for Radio Pictures' (later RKO). Thirteen Women starred Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne in a pre-Hays code, high budget thriller produced by David O. Selznick and drawn from the novel by Tiffany Thayer. Entwistle played a small supporting role as Hazel Cousins.^[20] It premiered on October 14, 1932, a month after her death, at the Roxy Theater in New York City and was released in Los Angeles on November 11 to neither critical nor commercial success. By the time it was re-released in 1935, 14 minutes had been cut from the movie's original 73 minute running length. In 2008 Variety magazine cited Thirteen Women as one of the earliest "female ensemble" films.^[21]

Death

On Sunday, September 18, 1932, an anonymous woman telephoned the police and said that while hiking she had found a body below the Hollywood sign (which then read Hollywoodland) and then, according to a police transcript of the call, "wrapped a jacket, shoes and purse in a bundle and laid them on the steps of the Hollywood Police Station." A detective and two radio car officers found the body of a moderately well-dressed, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman in the 100-foot ravine below the sign. Entwistle remained unidentified until her uncle connected her two-day absence with the description and initials P.E. on a suicide note which had been found in the purse and published by the newspapers.^[22] He said that on Friday the 16th she had told him she was going for a walk to a drugstore and see some friends. The police surmised that instead, she made her way from his Beachwood Drive home up the nearby southern slope of Mount Lee to the foot of the Hollywoodland sign, climbed a workman's ladder to the top of the "H" and jumped.^[22] The cause of death was listed by the coroner as "multiple fractures of the pelvis."^[23]

The suicide note as published read:

"I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E."^[24]

Entwistle's death brought wide and often sensationalized publicity. Her funeral was held in Hollywood and the body was cremated, with the ashes later sent to Glendale, Ohio, for burial next to her father in Oak Hill Cemetery, where they were interred on January 5, 1933.^[25] The burial site was unmarked until 2010 when, following a donation drive carried out on the social networking site Facebook, an engraved granite marker was installed on September 16, widely believed to be the 78th anniversary of her death.^[25]

References and notes

External links

• Peg Entwistle at the Internet Movie Database
• Peg Entwistle at the TCM Movie Database
• Peg Entwistle at the Internet Broadway Database
• Peg Entwistle at Find a Grave (with photograph of the 2010 marker)