Column Chronicles: Hollywood mysteries

Hollywood mysteries

Frank Cotolo
May 13, 2021

Many people are fascinated with the Golden Age of Hollywood, its movie stars, its writers, directors and the images they have all provoked. That’s why there are people who study mysteries of Hollywood's movie community and speculate the rumors surrounding them.

Boris Karloff's unique voice and accent makes many fans wonder why no one talks like him anymore. It was recently discovered that there was one person who spoke exactly like him. A theory is that Karloff’s Will left his speech patterns to an Italian cook he admired when visiting Tuscany.

Carole Lombard died in a plane crash. Some people thought she was dead; others still believe that after her disappearance she lived the rest of her life on an island with Amelia Earhart.

Silent movie star Clara Bow loved dogs and owned so many that rumors spread she ate with them while kneeling on all fours using her personal bowl. "She did not eat dog food", said someone, "she liked shrimp."

An historian of the Academy Awards wrote that his research was filled with evidence proving the Oscar statue was actually the shape of an exclusive sex toy used by co-stars of big budget films.

Male movie icon Clark Gable never existed, say some skeptics. Some historians say that the man seen in movies starring Clark Gable was actually seven men made up to look like a template of a man everyone thought was the actor Clark Gable. The same historian claims he knows the names of the men who played Gable throughout his film career and their features are odd when not in disguise. One, for instance, named Victor Von Schtippen Lachbronker, was only four feet tall. Another was a man named Clementon "The Grimy Ghost" Tomaria, who was shot in the face in a rifle accident at the age of 12. More evidence, says the historian (whose name is kept in confidence until his next of kin is notified) is the cryptic messages about the false Gables in a strange rendition of the literary classic titled "The House Of Seven Gables."

Another mystery involves the late, great Jack Palance. Some think that he worked part time as a superior surgeon. "He was a successful brain surgeon," says one historian, "and he saved the lives of a few big stars, some co-stars, three wardrobe assistants, a location caterer and Orson Welles".

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.