You’ve seen Frank Christi before. His chiseled mug has graced the big and small screens countless times. The New York native brought his craggy streetwise visage to villainous roles in Baretta, The Rockford Files, Kojak and other police dramas. In movies, he appeared on the wrong side of the law in Terminal Island, The Hit and The Don is Dead.

His checkered past must have helped his acting career. He carried a police record that dated back to the 1950s, when he was arrested for burglary. Later, he would move on to a run-in with a Secret Service agent over his connection to a large sum of counterfeit currency. But, soon he turned to Hollywood and seemed to have put his shady dealings behind him.

In the early morning hours of July 9, 1982, Frank’s life took a turn that was straight out of one of his gangster scripts. He was confronted by two men under the carport of his rundown home on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Frank was shot to death, found later on the ground next to his ten-year old Datsun. Frank was 52.

A neighbor saw Frank with his hands raised, pleading, “What did I do?,” when the two men opened fire. A known mob informant (Anthony Fiato, who also testified in O.J. Simpson’s trial) led police to Norman Freedberg, the jealous lover of one of Frank’s exes. Freedberg paid hit men $2,700 to kill Frank. Eleven years after the crime, two men were caught, tried and convicted, each serving life sentences. A third man was implicated by Freedberg, but died of lung cancer before he could be sentenced. A trial for Freedberg ended with a hung jury. Plans are still being made for a retrial.

Comments

comments

Marjorie Guthrie began performing in her native Winnipeg at the tender age of 8. She was part of a group of child entertainers in a troupe that toured throughout Canada. As a teenager, Marjorie traveled to San Francisco to take a stab at vaudeville. She partnered with Thelma Wolpa as a comedy duo under the names (at various times) Wolpa and Guthrie, Little Bits of Everything, and The White Sisters, the name on which they eventually settled once they moved their act to New York City. After three years, they broke up the act, although they both continued to use the surname White. Thelma went on to film infamy, starring in the 1936 cult classic Reefer Madness.

Marjorie married in 1924 and continued to appear on Broadway. In 1929, Marjorie and her husband moved to Hollywood. She immediately signed on with Fox Films (the forerunner to 20th Century Fox) and starred in a string of comedies. Marjorie worked with top stars of the day, Humphrey Bogart, Joan Crawford and Van Heflin, as well as respected directors, like Raoul Walsh and Mervyn LeRoy. She appeared in two installments of Fox’s popular Charlie Chan series, alongside future stars  Bela Lugosi and Robert Young in an unlikely pairing. In 1934, Marjorie was cast in a comedy short subject for Columbia Pictures called Woman Haters. It was the first of nearly 200 shorts starring the Three Stooges. Marjorie lit up the screen as Larry Fine’s suspicious wife. As with most of her roles, she stole the show.  However, it would be Marjorie’s last film.

In 1935, Marjorie was travelling as a passenger on Roosevelt Highway in Santa Monica, California. The driver, her friend Marlow M. Lovell, recklessly sideswiped the car of a couple who had been married only an hour earlier. Lovell’s car flipped and Marjorie suffered serious injuries. The diminutive actress was taken to a Hollywood hospital where she died the next day of internal hemorrhaging. She was 31.

Comments

comments