Death
On Sunday, 18 September 1932, an anonymous woman telephoned the police and said that while hiking she had found a body below the Hollywoodland sign (now known as the Hollywood sign) and then, according to a police transcript of the call, "wrapped a jacket, shoes and purse in a bundle and laid them on the steps of the Hollywood Police Station." A detective and two radio car officers found the body of a moderately well-dressed, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman in the 100-foot ravine below the sign. Entwistle remained unidentified until her uncle connected her two-day absence with the description and initials P.E. on a suicide note which had been found in the purse and published by the newspapers. He said that on Friday the 16th she had told him she was going for a walk to a drugstore and see some friends. The police surmised that instead, she made her way from his Beachwood Drive home up the nearby southern slope of Mount Lee to the foot of the Hollywoodland sign, climbed a workman's ladder to the top of the "H" and jumped. The cause of death was listed by the coroner as "multiple fractures of the pelvis."
The suicide note as published read:
"I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E."
Entwistle's death brought wide and often sensationalised publicity. Her funeral was held in Hollywood and the body was cremated, with the ashes later sent to Glendale, Ohio for burial next to her father in Oak Hill Cemetery, where they were interred on 5 January 1933.
Read more about this topic: Peg Entwistle
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Death, the most dreaded of all evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.”
—Epicurus (c. 341–271 B.C.)
“Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man’s life and work go on after his “death,” whether we feel it or not, whether we are aware of the individual names or not.... There is no such thing as death according to our view!”
—Martin Bormann (1900–1945)
“Then is it sin
To rush into the secret house of death
Ere death dare come to us?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)