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Peggy O'Neill on right, in plaid, with Jackie Moran and Jane Powell in "Song of the Open Road" (1944)
Pretty 1940's starlet Peggy O'Neill was found dead by suicide in her boyfriend's apartment at 1014 North Doheny Drive on April 13, 1945. She was 21, from San Francisco, and praised by columnists Louella Parsons and Sheilah Graham. She was featured in the 1944 Jane Powell musical "Song of the Open Road," about a crowd of teenagers who harvest oranges in Southern California to help the war effort, and her latest role had been as a cigarette girl in "The Hoodlum Saint" with Esther Williams at MGM. Peggy's agent, Al Orsatti, said she was to have signed a long-term contract with Paramount on the day she was found dead.
Peggy had been having an "on and off" affair with screenwriter Albert Mannheimer for two years, but in January 1945 she had married Ensign Lloyd L. Culver. By April, she had resumed her affair with Mannheimer (he was later nominated for an Oscar for "Born Yesterday" in 1950/51) and was living with her mother in a fashionable apartment building at 410 North Rossmore Avenue, between Beverly and Rosewood. On April 12, Peggy arrived late for dinner at Mannheimer's apartment, accompanied by actor Eddie Hall. A "violent quarrel" ensued and Mannheimer left alone for the theatre. He returned shortly after midnight to find the dinner table set and Peggy lying on the floor dead from an overdose of sleeping pills.
Information about Peggy's life can be found at the ever-fascinating "Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen" site. One confusing detail there is that Mannheimer's address is listed as 1014/1015 Doheny Drive. 1014 Doheny, between Phyllis Avenue and Sunset Blvd., now called "Regency House," is directly across the street from 1015 Doheny. Regency House looks to be a building from the late 1930's, while 1015 Doheny appears to be a building from the 1920's, although it has been severely remodeled.
Actor Eddie Hall was a Hollywood curiosity. He has around 170 film credits between 1937 and 1947, nearly all of them uncredited. Typical descriptions of his appearances include "mechanic walking across used-car lot," in "Detour" (1945), "Customer eating at lunch counter" in "And Now Tomorrow," (1944), and "Soldier picking up suitcase in bus station" in "The Blue Dahlia," (1946). He became a car salesman after leaving films in 1947. Hall died at age 51 in 1963 in Granada Hills, leaving a 5-year old son who years later carefully archived his father's fleeting cameos for the Internet Movie Database. Hall's career is described in "The Unsung Joe," a website devoted to obscure bit players and extras. Take a look here:
http://morethanyouneededtoknow.typep...ie-hall-1.html
Actor Eddie Hall, 1940's[/URL]
www.imdb.com/eddiehall/nm0355538
1014 N. Doheny Drive
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1015 N.Doheny Drive
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410 N. Rossmore, Hollywood
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