Bizarre Hollywood Deaths: Marie Prevost

The public has a strong appetite for details when a star dies, and the more unusual or scandalous the circumstances, the more appeal the story has. This is the story of one former Hollywood star whose death may have sadly overshadowed her prolific film career because of the gory manner in which her body was discovered.

Born on November 8, 1898 in Ontario, Marie Prevost's birth name was Mary Bickford Dunn. The family moved to Denver, Colorado and later to Los Angeles, California. At 18 Mary was prompted to look for work in the movie industry due to her stunning good looks and found herself working at Keystone Studios, owned by Mack Sennett, as one of his Bathing Beauties. It was Sennett who gave her the stage name, "Marie Prevost" because he felt her appearance had a French appeal.

In 1921, Marie left Keystone Studios and signed with Universal Studios. While at Universal she worked on the films Moonlight Follies and The Married Flapper . She left Universal in 1922 and began to work for Warner Brothers, where her career seemed to really take off. Marie proved to directors that she was far more than just a pretty face, and people took notice of her ability to take on roles that required sharp comedic timing combined with the ability to play flirtatious characters within the confines of silent films. She met her future husband, Ken Harlan, while working on The Beautiful and the Damned, the movie version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
By 1926, Marie was working for Producers Distributing Corporation and an event occurred which started the eventual demise of her career and personal life. Marie turned to alcohol to cope with the death of her mother, who had passed away in a car accident. Her marriage to Harlan was failing, adding to her depression. She began to gain weight but was still able to find some work. However, Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl in 1929 was a failure. Films began to use sound, and while many claim Marie's voice was nasal and didn't record well, that rumor has been largely disputed. The roles started thinning out for Marie, who continued to battle her weight and alcoholism. It is reported that Marie stopped eating in an effort to reclaim her career, and on January 23, 1937 the police found her body in a shoddy L.A. apartment where she had died of starvation. It was her pet dachshund's barking that had alerted neighbors that there was a problem in her home, and also her dachshund who helped Marie go down in grisly death scene history. Trapped in the apartment, the dog had chewed on Marie's arms and legs, either in an effort to awaken her or because he needed something to eat. This was another tragic ending for a fallen Hollywood star.

Sources:

Marie Prevost, Eaten By Her Dog
Nick Lowe's "Marie Provost" video on YouTube