Georgia Engel

popular name: Jayne Mansfield

date_of_death: June 29, 1967

age: 34

cause_of_death: Brain trauma sustained in automobile crash

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Jayne Mansfield was an American actress, singer, model, nightclub entertainer, and Playboy Playmate. A sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s while under contract at 20th Century Fox, Mansfield was known for her well-publicized personal life and publicity stunts. Her film career was short-lived, but she had several box-office successes and won a Theatre World Award and a Golden Globe Award. Mansfield enjoyed success in the role of fictional actress Rita Marlowe in the Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955–1956), which she reprised in the film adaptation of the same name (1957). Her other film roles include the musical comedy The Girl Can't Help It (1956), the drama The Wayward Bus (1957), the neo-noir Too Hot to Handle (1960), and the sex comedy Promises! Promises! (1963); the latter established Mansfield as the first major American actress to perform in a nude scene in a post-silent era film. Mansfield took her professional name from her first husband, public relations professional Paul Mansfield. She married three times, each marriage ending in divorce, and had five children. She was allegedly intimately involved with numerous men, including Robert and John F. Kennedy, her attorney Samuel S. Brody, and Las Vegas entertainer Nelson Sardelli. In 1967, Mansfield was in Biloxi, Mississippi, for an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club. After two appearances on the evening of June 28, Mansfield, Sam Brody (her attorney and companion), their driver Ronnie Harrison (age 20), and three of her children – Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska – left Biloxi after midnight in a 1966 Buick Electra 225. Their destination was New Orleans, where Mansfield was to appear on WDSU's Midday Show the next day. At about 2:25 a.m. on June 29, on U.S. Highway 90, 1 mile west of the Rigolets Bridge, the Buick crashed at high speed into the rear of a 'Johnson' tractor-trailer that had slowed down for an approaching insecticide fog-spraying truck which was flashing a red light. The three adults in the front seat died instantly. The children, asleep in the rear seat, survived with minor injuries.

popular name: Carl Switzer

date_of_death: January 21, 1959

age: 31

cause_of_death: Gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Carl Switzer, the actor who as a child played Alfalfa in the Our Gang comedy film series, was the freckle-faced boy with a warbling singing voice and a cowlick protruding from the top of his head. It was Switzer’s best-known role in his short-lived Hollywood career. Our Gang revolved around a group of ragtag children and their adventures. In addition to Alfalfa, the ensemble of memorable characters included Spanky, Darla, Buckwheat, Froggy, Stymie and Pete the dog. Our Gang was considered groundbreaking in that it featured white and black child actors interacting equally. Switzer played Alfalfa from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s. In 1955, the Our Gang films were turned into a hugely popular TV series called The Little Rascals; however, Switzer never received any royalties from the show. After Our Gang, Switzer found small roles in movies and on television, but his most successful days in Hollywood were behind him. He made money working odd jobs, including stints as a hunting guide and bartender, and had several run-ins with the police. On January 21, 1959, Switzer and a friend went to the Mission Hills home of Moses “Bud” Stiltz, to collect a debt Switzer believed he was owed. A fight broke out, during which Stiltz shot and killed Switzer. A jury later ruled the incident justifiable homicide. Carl was laid to rest at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

popular name: Paulette Goddard

date_of_death: April 23, 1990

age: 79

cause_of_death: Heart failure

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Paulette Goddard was an American actress and film producer best known for her work during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Born Marion Levy on June 3, 1910, in Whitestone Landing, Queens, New York, she began her career as a fashion model and stage performer before transitioning to film in the early 1930s. Goddard gained fame through her collaborations with Charlie Chaplin, particularly for her role as the Gamin in Modern Times (1936) and later in The Great Dictator (1940). Goddard's career flourished in the 1940s with notable roles in films like The Women (1939), North West Mounted Police (1940), and So Proudly We Hail! (1943), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was long regarded as one of Hollywood's richest and sexiest women. Her four husbands included comic great Charles Chaplin, actor Burgess Meredith and famed novelist Erich Maria Remarque, author of 'All Quiet on the Western Front.' She refused to discuss her private affairs and never admitted her 1936 marriage to Chaplin until she divorced him six years later.