Japanese promo poster for the American porno flick Glitter, with an image of star Shauna Grant, 1983. Grant committed suicide a year after this film was released. 

Promo shot of Chinese actress Betty Loh Ti, or Loh Tih, who starred in numerous Hong Kong films by the legendary Shaw Brothers, seen here circa early 1960s. Loh Ti died young, aged 31. Most western websites, nearly all of which have pasted their Loh Ti bios directly from Wikipedia, say suicide is rumored to be the cause but that the truth of this is debatable. It took us perhaps three minutes to find recollections online from people who actually lived in China or Hong Kong at the time, and they all confirm suicide.

The above issue of Confidential is less visually chaotic than usual on the cover, but packs a wallop inside. The communist tag they’ve slapped on Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus stems from his having attended a leftist school. His political opponent in a 1954 election run-off tried to use it against him, but Faubus won anyway. In 1957, Faubus, at the time facing a serious primary challenge from an unapologetic segregationist, called in the National Guard to close high schools in Little Rock in an effort to prevent black students from attending them. The event made him, for a time, the face of the conservative South, as photos of Faubus speaking to crowds from the front stairs of Central High School circulated around the world. Two years afterward, in 1959, Confidential published this issue. So Faubus was branded a leftist, then a rightist. then a leftist again.

Many historians argue that Faubus, who was actually a lifelong desegrega- tionist, harbored few if any racist beliefs, but by closing schools was merely trying to win an election by proving to the sizable racist electorate in Arkansas that, yes, he too could deny equal rights to African Americans. There’s also the question of whether he did it to prevent white mobs from taking violent action against black kids, and it could be argued that if his rightwing rival had defeated him, years of Faubus’s progressive work might have been jeopardized. The first reading paints Faubus as an opportunist, the second as a good-intentioned pragmatist. Both speak to the reality of politics, where sticking to your principles becomes a dodgy proposition when doing it might cost your job. But viewed from the perspective of a black highschooler, any man who enforces the prevailing apartheid is a bad man—political realities nothwithstanding. So what was Faubus in the end? We may never know. 

Needless to say, quite a furor erupted over the revelations. Even today, you can find apologist websites explaining that Bing’s childrearing techniques were not so harsh for the times, and attack websites that paint him as a murderous tyrant. Phillip Crosby disputed many of the claims inhis brother’s book, but Lindsey and Dennis backed Gary’s account. Their suicides by gunshot, six and eight years later, respectively, serve as the debate’s curious exclamation points. But Bing Crosby—whether monstrous abuser or victim of slander—remains an American icon to this day, and books written by other family members portray him as a loving father. As with Governor Faubus, in the end, we may never know what he really was. Both stories prove the old adage true: History depends on who’s doing the telling.

In our continuing chronicle of mid-20th century tabloid magazines we have a new player—Whisper magazine. Whisper was founded as a girlie magazine in 1946 by Confidential owner Robert Harrison. By the time he sold out in 1958 Whisper was already a clone of Confidential in style and content, although sometimes it sported a simpler cover motif with a celeb framed inside a circle. In this example from 1956, the circle becomes a blood red disc reminiscent of the old Short Stories covers, but which is probably supposed to suggest werewolves. The spotlight here is on George Sanders, one of the more interesting Hollywood characters of the time. Born in Russia, Sanders was British by lineage, and built a film career playing aristocrat types, often with an air of menace. This was most aptly displayed in 1950's All About Eve, a role for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Sanders was known as a smooth operator, but his personal life was a wreck. He married four women over the years—including serial bride Zsa Zsa Gabor, and her older sister Magda. He would have been between marriages at the time of Whisper’s alleged strike out with an unnamed ingénue, but he’d be back in the saddle by 1960, marrying actress Benita Hume. Health problems eventually robbed Sanders of his acting talent and he finished his career in the low budget stinker Psychomania. Eventually, he also lost the ability to indulge in his beloved hobby of playing music, which prompted him to destroy his piano with an axe. Not long after, he took a fatal dose of Nembutal, leaving behind a suicide note addressed to the world that read in part: I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck. 

Adrienne Ames' roles in such 1930s films as Slander House and Woman Wanted earned her a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, but emotional problems caused erratic behavior that made her tabloid fodder and eventually led to her suicide at age 40.

Midnight Cowboy was a very good book before it was a very good movie. It was written by James Leo Herlihy in 1966, and immediately hailed as a classic. Herlihy sort of faded from the writing scene over time, and died at age 66 after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, but Midnight Cowboy — shown here with art by the incomparable James Bama—stands as a major achievement in U.S. literature.

In Brooklyn, New York, authorities have found actor John Costelloe dead from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Costelloe, who played the character Johnny Cakes on television’s Sopranos was found yesterday in his basement bedroom, but died days earlier. He had been appearing off-Broadway in playwright Jim Neu’s Gang of Seven, and was due on the big screen in Doubt opposite Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Neu said he had noticed a change in Costelloe’s mood of late, and had queried the actor what was bothering him, but without success. “He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would reach out,” Neu said. “There couldn’t have been a more supportive and friendly group. If he wanted to reach out to people, we were right in front of him. I wish he did.”

Last night in Covina, California, a gunman dressed as Santa Claus shot and killed at least 6 people at a family Christmas gathering, and deliberately sparked a fire that gutted the home. The gunman, identified as Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, reportedly had been distressed about the finalization of his divorce, and a layoff from his engineer job. The house belonged to his ex-inlaws, who were reportedly among the victims, along with Pardo’s ex-wife, who was perhaps the main target of the attack.

According to survivors, Pardo knocked on the front door of the house carrying what appeared to be a gift. When the door was opened by a little girl aged 8, he shot her and opened fire on the other occupants. The gift he carried was a device he used to spray a homemade napalm mixture, which ignited and set the house ablaze even as Pardo was in the midst of his rampage.

Pardo fled the scene but was found later, 40 miles away in Sylmar, California, dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Authorities say identification of the people he killed may be difficult because some bodies were incinerated, and the house was a smoking ruin. Indeed, emergency crews were still sifting through the wreckage today searching for more possible victims.

Lupe Velez was born in Mexico, bounced from Hollywood films to the Broadway stage and back to Tinseltown, but never achieved the level of stardom she craved. She had a career, though—she made more than forty films, including the Mexican Spitfire series, which consisted of five projects over three years. But there were failed love affairs and a divorce. When an unmarried Velez became pregnant in 1944, her strict Catholic upbringing prevented her from seeking an abortion, but also caused her to believe giving birth out of wedlock would be an unbearable stigma for the child. Unable to see a way out, she took a handful of sleeping pills that killed her and her unborn baby. The suicide rocked Hollywood, and even inspired a 1965 Andy Warhol film entitled, appropriately, Lupe. She died sixty-two years ago today.

When nineteen year old Abraham Biggs, Jr. announced over the website Justin.tv that he planned to commit suicide, viewers assumed it was an idle threat. That probably explains why few alarms were raised when Biggs took a fatal dose of pills, reclined on a bed, and died with his webcam recording the entire episode.

During the hours it took for Biggs to sink into coma and death, viewers watched and cracked jokes in a group chat room. An autopsy concluded Biggs died from a combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, which was prescribed for a bipolar disorder. The Florida teen is not the first to commit suicide in front of an audience, but the slow developing nature of the incident caused authorities to question whether something could have been done to stop him.

The users who witnessed the suicide told police investigators they did not take Biggs seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before. Prosecutors reluctantly agreed there is no legal recourse against those who watched and didn’t alert police, even though witnesses claim Biggs was pushed or dared by some users to act on his threat.

Authorities had, however, explored the possibility of charging the website owners with negligence. But yesterday a lawyer close to the case said there isn’t much chance of charges being filed. While there could be liability if website operators knew about the incident, had the ability to intervene and didn’t take action, it did not appear as if that were true. Michael Seifert, chief executive of Justin.tv, offered condolences to the Biggs family.