The porn industry welcomed her with open arms. Two years later she was dead.
Above is a cover of Variety magazine published today in 1984 reporting the death of porn starlet Shauna Grant the previous month. Born Colleen Applegate in Minnesota, she became a top-earning adult film performer over her two-year career in Los Angeles, but was also a heavy cocaine user and was ambivalent at best about her work. In fact, despite her popularity with the paying public she sometimes had difficulty acquiring roles because directors were well aware that she had no zest for what she did and they believed it showed in her performances. But her lack of enthusiasm wasn't just for her work—it was for her entire life, which was fueled by cash and parties, but also filled with hangers-on, bad men, and dodgy friends.
At some point she contracted herpes, and though many accounts assume it came from her career, it's just as likely she got the disease from her many outside-the-industry acquaintances, considering the incredibly high infection rates among the general public. In any case, with a drug habit and an STD, as well as an abortion and a broken relationship weighing on her, not to mention a career that she was ashamed of, Grant shot herself in the head with a .22 rifle on 23 March, and appeared posthumously on the Variety cover above. We chose the photo below because she seems so isolated in it, even lonely. A while back we shared an amazing Japanese poster with her, which you can see here, and we'll get back to more promo material from her later.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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