Alma Rubens rose to stardom after her role opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the 1916 film The Half-Breed. She made a run of pictures for Triangle Studios before signing with William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Productions. Hearst had his publicity team tout Alma as a direct descendant of Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens. (She was not.)

Her first three films for Cosmopolitan were hits. But, Alma developed an addiction to heroin. Her drug use made her difficult to work with and unreliable on the set. She managed to complete three more pictures before Hearst let her out of her contract in 1922.

By the late 1920s, Alma’s drug use increased and was out of control. She was in and out of sanitariums. She escaped from a few and attempted to stab a physician at one. But, by 1930, she announced she had kicked her drug habit. She was appearing in a play, but two weeks later, she was arrested for trying to smuggle morphine and cocaine into Mexico. Shortly after her release from jail, she contracted pneumonia and bronchitis and fell into a coma. Alma never regained consciousness. She died on January 21, 1931, just a few days after her 33rd birthday.

Comments

comments

Philip Taylor Kramer joined psychedelic rock group Iron Butterfly in 1974, playing bass on two albums and touring for a few years. After the band’s breakup, he played with founding member Ron Bushy in several off-shoot projects.

Leaving his music career behind, Taylor earned a degree in aerospace engineering. He worked on the MX missile guidance system for a contractor of the US Department of Defense. Later, he concentrated on developments in the fields of fractal compression, facial recognition systems, and advanced communications. In 1990, Taylor founded Total Multimedia, Inc, with his partner Randy Jackson, Michael Jackson‘s younger brother. The company developed data compression techniques for CD-ROMs.

In February 1995, Taylor was supposed to pick up a business associate at LAX. On his way, he called his wife to say that plans had changed. He told her that his business associate (and his wife) would be going directly to a hotel. Taylor and his wife would meet the couple later. However, Taylor still went to to airport and spent forty-five minutes there, as per security camera footage. During his drive to the airport, Taylor made a number of cell phone calls to his wife, to Ron Bushy and to the police. In his frantic call to the police, Taylor said, “I’m going to kill myself. And I want everyone to know O. J. Simpson is innocent. They did it.” Taylor was brought in as an expert, hired to analyze the authenticity of a video tape that the FBI obtained during the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Taylor did not show up at the hotel for the meeting. He was never seen or heard from again.

On May 29, 1999, Taylor’s Ford Aerostar minivan was discovered by two photographers scouting locations for a photo shoot in Decker Canyon in Malibu, California. The minivan contained skeletal remains, later identified as Taylor’s. He was 42. The case still remains unsolved.

Comments

comments

Born the daughter of an engineer and executive with the Royal Dutch Shell Company, Blanca Rosa Henrietta Stella Welter Vorhauer became fluent in eight languages, a result of her family’s frequent relocations around the world.

With original aspirations to enter the field of medicine, a chance meeting with screen idol Errol Flynn changed her mind. Flynn convinced the young beauty to try her hand at acting. He even offered to pay to fix a few of her crooked teeth, an offer which Blanca happily accepted. Flynn even gave Blanca her stage name — “Linda Christian” — taken from the character of “Fletcher Christian,” which he played in a 1933 film version of Mutiny on the Bounty. Flynn was later shocked when the bill he received for some light dental work tacked on some extensive cosmetic work.

Now using her new name, Linda made her film debut alongside Danny Kaye and Dinah Shore in Up In Arms, which was also Kaye’s first film. She quickly followed-up with several more films including 1948’s Tarzan and the Mermaids, the final Tarzan adventure to feature Johnny Weissmuller. Linda was later cast in a TV production of Casino Royale opposite Barry Nelson as “James Bond,” thus becoming the very first “Bond Girl,” beating Ursula Andress to the title by eight years.

Despite appearing in over two dozen movies, Linda Christian is best remembered for her eight-year marriage to actor Tyrone Power. The couple were both offered roles in From Here to Eternity. Tyrone Power was not interested in the film. The roles were eventually given to Montgomery Clift and Donna Reed. Linda is the mother of actress Taryn Power and singer Romina Power. The couple divorced in 1956. One month later, Linda was dating Spanish racecar driver Alfonso de Portago. Linda is seen kissing de Portago in a photo taken just prior to a race — a race in which de Portago’s Ferrari crashed, killing him, his navigator and nine spectators. The press labeled the photo “The Kiss of Death.” In the 1960s, Linda had a relationship with actor Glenn Ford.

Linda essentially retired from acting in the late 1960s, with only two more screen appearances in the 80s. She passed away in 2011, at the age of 87. Her daughter Taryn died in 2020.

Comments

comments

As a teenager, Ray Nelson was an avid science fiction fan and budding writer in the genre.  After graduation from high school, Ray attended the University of Chicago, where he majored in theology. Post college, he spent four years in Paris, where he rubbed elbows with such iconic and influential writers as William S. Burroughs, Jean-Paul Sarte and Allen Ginsburg. He worked with other writers smuggling government-banned Henry Miller novels out of France.

Ray had a number of his stories and cartoons published in a variety of science fiction periodicals. His most famous story — Eight O’Clock in the Morning — was published in late 1963. Nearly twenty years later, director John Carpenter used the tale as the basis for his film They Live. The the late 1960s, Ray befriended and collaborated with author Philip K. Dick on several projects. He also supplied Dick with LSD on several occasions. Ray continued to write into his later years, winning the prestigious Philip K. Dick Award in 1982 for his novel The Prometheus Man.

Ray Nelson passed away in November 2022 at the age of 91.

Despite his success and recognition as a writer, Ray is better remembered for something else. As a high school student in Cadillac, Michigan, Ray invented the propeller beanie cap as a symbol for the science fiction fan community. He also claimed that he created the “Beany” character for the children’s’ television series Time For Beany (later known as Beany and Cecil). Ray said that he submitted the character to a contest in 1948 as a 17-year old. This story is debated and animator Bob Clampett is officially credited as the creator of Beany and Cecil.

Comments

comments