Gregg Toland

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: Jason Robards

date_of_death: December 26, 2000

age: 78

cause_of_death: Lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Recognized around the world as the definitive interpreter of the works of Eugene O'Neill throughout his long and esteemed career, Jason Robards has been hailed as one of this country's finest stage actors and acclaimed for his outstanding work in film and on television. Ellis Rabb, who directed Robards in a 1980s revival of the classic American comedy You Can't Take It with You, put into words what Robards demonstrates every time he steps onto a stage or in front of a camera: "Robards can do anything, from O'Neill to light comedy to Shakespeare, a range we seldom see in this country." After starring in such movies as Philadelphia, Crimson Tide, Melvin and Howard, and Julia, by the end of his career Robards received two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor. He is only one of 24 performers to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield, CT.

popular name: Margaret Kelly

date_of_death: September 11, 2004

age: 94

cause_of_death: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Margaret Kelly, known as Miss Bluebell, was an Irish dancer who was the founder of the Bluebell Girls dance troupe. At the age of 14, Kelly left school and joined a Scottish dance troupe called the Hot Jocks. Nine months later, she was contracted to the Scala in Berlin by noted producer Alfred Jackson, manager of the Jackson Girls. Kelly remained at the Scala for 5 years. Beginning in 1930, Kelly danced in Paris for the Folies Bergère. In 1932, when she was 22, she created her own troupe there called the Bluebell Girls. Bluebell found her greatest triumph in the Nevada desert when she and Donn Arden brought the Bluebells to the Las Vegas strip. Miss Bluebell caught Vegas fever, and her show exploded into an extravaganza that included live camels, jugglers, Roman gladiators, illusionists, ice skaters, strong men and waterfalls. She sold out the Stardust Hotel and the MGM Grand. In six decades she left a legacy that recruited and trained 14,000 Bluebells, set up troupes over the world, received countless awards including the Legion d’honneur and the Order of the British Empire (OBE), had an audience with the pope, and was the subject of a book and BBC documentary.