The 1930s: The Arts: Deaths

THE 1930s: THE ARTS: DEATHS

Renee Adoree, 35, film actor (The Big Parade, 1925, Call of the Flesh, 1930), 5 October 1933.

Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle, 46, film actor (His Wife's Mother, A Reckless Romance) accused of causing starlet Virginia Rappe's death in 1921, 29 June 1933.

Mary Austin, 65, author of books on Native Americans, including Lands of the Sun (1927) and One Smoke Stories (1934), 13 August 1934.

Heywood Broun, 51, writer, journalist, cofounder of Newspaper Guild, 18 December 1939.

Lon Chaney, 47, actor, star of The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), 26 August 1930.

Charles Waddell Chesnutt, 74, novelist (The Conjure Woman, 1899), 15 November 1932.

Herbert Croly, 61, author, publisher of the New Republic, 17 May 1930.

Marie Dressier, 64, film actor, won 1931 Academy Award for Min and Bill, 28 July 1934.

Finley P. Dunne, 68, journalist and humorist, wrote humorous essays in the character of "Mr. Dooley," 24 April 1936.

Harrison Fisher, 58, illustrator of magazine covers, created "Fisher Girl," 19 January 1934.

Pauline Frederick, 53, silent-screen star (Bella Donna, Madame X), 19 August 1938.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 77, author of books on rural New England (Pembroke, 1894), 13 March 1930.

George Gershwin, 39, composer (Rhapsody in Blue, 1924, Porgy and Bess, 1935), won first Pulitzer Prize for a musical, Of Thee I Sing, in 1931, 11 July 1937.

William James Glackens, 68, impressionist, member of realist school The Eight, later known as the Ashcan School, 22 May 1938.

Alma Gluck, 54, New York Metropolitan Opera soprano (1909-1912) whose recording of "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" sold two million copies, 27 October 1938.

Zane Grey, 64, writer of Western novels, most notably Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), 23 October 1939.

Mary Louise Cecelia "Texas" Guinan, 51, producer, known as "The Queen of the Speakeasies," 5 November 1933.

Frank Harris, 75, author of biography and erotica (My Life and Loves ), 26 August 1931.

Childe Hassam, 75, impressionist painter, etcher, 25 August 1935.

De Wolfe Hopper (William De Wolfe), 77, actor known for recitation of "Casey at the Bat," 23 September 1935.

Sidney Howard, 48, playwright, screenwriter, won 1939 Oscar for screenplay of Gone With the Wind and 1924 Pulitzer Prize for They Knew What They Wanted, 23 August 1939.

Edgar Watson Howe, 84, author of early realist novel Story of a Country Town, 3 October 1937.

Kin Hubbard (Frank McKinney), 62, creator of cartoon character Abe Martin, 26 December 1930.

James Weldon Johnson, 67, writer (The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1902), diplomat, secretary of NAACP, 1916-1930, 26 June 1938.

Ring(gold) Lardner, 48, sportswriter, short-story writer (You Know Me Al, 1915), playwright with George S. Kaufman of 1929 hit June Moon, 25 September 1933.

Vachel Lindsay, 52, poet (The Cargo, 1914, Johnny Appleseed, 1928), 5 December 1931.

Horace B. Liveright, 46, publisher, 24 September 1933.

Harriet Monroe, 76, poet and critic, founder of Poetry magazine, which publicized work of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost, 26 September 1936.

Paul Elmer More, 72, editor of the Nation (1909-1914), leading voice of New Humanism, 9 March 1937.

William Morrow, 58, book publisher, 11 November 1931.

F. A. Parsons, 64, president of New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, 26 May 1930.

Tyrone Power, 62, Broadway matinee idol, 30 December 1931.

Will Rogers, 56, humorist, 15 August 1935.

Ole Edvart Rolvaag, 55, novelist (Giants in the Earth, 1927, Peder Victorious, 1929), 5 November 1931.

Arthur H. Scribner, 73, book publisher, 3 July 1932.

Charles Scribner, 76, book publisher, 19 April 1930.

John Philip Sousa, 77, bandmaster, composer of 140 marches, including Stars and Stripes Forever, 6 March 1932.

Lincoln Steffens, 70, muckraking journalist and editor, exposed municipal corruption in The Shame of the Cities (1904), 9 August 1936.

Lorado Taft, 76, sculptor (Solitude of the Soul ), 30 October 1936.

Sara Teasdale, 50, poet, won 1918 Pulitzer Prize for Love Songs, 29 January 1933.

Fay Templeton, 73, actor, vaudevillian whose appearances included Fiddle-Dee-Dee, 3 October 1939,

Edith Wharton, 76, novelist and short-story writer (Ethan Fromme, 1911), won 1920 Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence, 11 August 1937.

Owen Wister, 78, novelist best known for The Virginian (1902), 21 July 1938.

Herbert Witherspoon, 61, first basso, New York Metropolitan Opera (1908-1916), director of Met, 1935, 10 May 1935.

Thomas Wolfe, 38, novelist (Look Homeward, Angel, 1929; You Cant Go Home Again, 1940), 15 September 1938.

Florenz Ziegfeld, 65, producer of long-running musical revue the Ziegfeld Follies, 22 July 1932.

Sources:

Beverly Baer and Neil E. Walker, eds. Almanac of Famous People (Detroit: Gale Research, 1994);

Miriam Allen De Ford and Joan Jackson, Who Was When? (New York: Wilson, 1976).