PAST OBITS: MARILYN MAXWELL

Here is the obituary for the beautiful and talented Marilyn Maxwell as it appeared in the New York Times on March 21, 1972...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., March 20 (UPI)—Marilyn Maxwell, who starred in numerous song‐and‐dance movies in’ the 1940's and later on television comedy shows, died today at her home at the age of 49.

Miss Maxwell, who had been under treatment for high blood pressure and a pulmonary ailment, was found in the bathroom by her son, Matthew, 15 years old, when he returned home from school in the afternoon, the police said.

A Durable Blonde

Miss Maxwell's durable blonde good looks and breezy manner carried her from World War II action films, radio and musical comedy to frequent television appearances.

She. appeared with Robert Taylor in ‘Stand By for Action,” with Wallace Beery in “Salute to the Marines” and with Kay Kyser in “Swing Fever,” in which Bosley Crowther, movie critic of The New York Times, called her “a routine blonde warbler.” She showed up with. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in “Lost in Harems; and was in several of the “Dr. Gillespie” medical sagas with Lionel Barrymore and Van Johnson.

In 1948, she won praise from Mr. Crowther as the “pictorial and sensuous Belle” in “Summer Holiday,” a musical screen version of Eugene O'Neill's “Ali! Wilderness” with Mickey Rooney.

In 1950 Mr. Crowther found her “lushly attractive as the bubble dancer who inhabits convention hotels” in “Key to the City,” in which Clark Gable played the lead.

That year she also was the female star of Bob Hope's troupe of entertainers visiting Korea in the early months of the conflict there. She had appeared with him in “The Lemon Drop Kid” and later in “Off Limits.”

On television she starred in a version of the stage show “Burlesque”in 1955 with a cast including Dan Dailey and Jack Oakie.

In 1961, television took the title “Bus Stop” from the William Inge play as a format for a series. Miss Maxwell played Gracie, proprietress of the roadside stop, but she later dropped out of the cast with the complaint that she was not suffi ciently involved in the actual plots.

Miss Maxwell, who was born in Clarinda, Iowa, graduated to Hollywood from the Pasadena Playhouse.

Her three marriages—to John Conte, an actor; Andy McIntyre, a restaurateur, and Jerry Davis, a producer—ended in divorce. Her surviving son,. Matthew, was a child of the third marriage...

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STAR FRIENDS: BOB HOPE AND MARILYN MAXWELL

With two movies, a weekly radio show and several overseas tours, 1950 was the busiest-ever year for superstar funny man Bob Hope. No wonder Dolores, his wife of 15 years, spent much of the time alone in their Hollywood mansion. Not that she worried about the state of their marriage.

"I don't like Bob being away so much but I trust him absolutely," Dolores told Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons. "Our marriage is stronger than ever."

Only a handful of Bob Hope's closest friends knew that Dolores was living in a make-believe world.

Her husband had fallen in love with another woman and for the next ten years was to conduct a secret love affair under the very noses of the media without a word of it being made public. Hope, then 47, had met 28-year-old dark-haired Marilyn Maxwell at MGM where she was on a five-year contract, but she hardly noticed him — she was having an affair with Frank Sinatra! 

When that ended in January 1950 she re-met Bob Hope when he asked her to appear in a huge charity gala he was organising at the Hollywood Bowl. Despite being married to Beverly Hills restaurateur Andy McIntyre, Marilyn was captivated by the wisecracking star. Soon they were meeting in secret and when Hope was looking for a co-star for his latest movie comedy, The Lemon Drop Kid, he chose Marilyn Maxwell.

Soon afterwards, Marilyn confided to her hairdresser: "I'd marry Bob and I think he'd marry me, but Dolores is a strict Catholic and would never let him go. 

"Their happy marriage is a sham. I know Bob loves me and is only happy with me. I don't mind staying in the shadows so long as it means we can be together."

In April 1951, after making My Favourite Spy, Hope and Marilyn Maxwell sailed for Europe on the liner Queen Mary for a promotional tour. This time gossip got back to Dolores who phoned her husband in London furious that he was publicly humiliating her. "Marilyn Maxwell is just an actress I work with," Bob Hope told her. When we're not working I never see her. Which was a little wide of the truth: the next day the couple flew for a holiday in Ireland when, according to Bob Home's long-time secretary Jean Greenberg, Hope asked Marilyn to marry him.

"She turned him down. She knew that Dolores would never give him a divorce. She also feared that if it was known that she was breaking up what was regarded as a fairytale Hollywood marriage, the big studios would never employ her again."

Added Jean Greenberg: "Bob and Dolores might appear happy together in public, but in fact they hadn't slept together in years."

In 1954 Marilyn Maxwell, who had divorced Andy McIntyre, married writer/producer Jerry Davis in 1954. But that didn't stop her passionate affair with Bob Hope. He provided her with a secret love-nest in Hollywood's Holmby Hills where they met several times a week.

By now, according to close friends, Hope had several times asked his wife for a divorce and she had refused. She had told him: "I don't care what you get up to in private. All I ask is that you don't humiliate me in public. People think we are happily married and I want that to continue."

Hope would organise private dinner parties for himself and Marilyn Maxwell in the luxurious Hollywood offices of his production company.  Food would be delivered from Romanoff's, Hollywood's top restaurant, and served on silver dishes. Then the waiters would leave and Hope and his mystery guest would enjoy a sumptuous meal.

Said Romanoff's boss Kart Niklas: "Bob would never say who he was entertaining but we always knew it was Marilyn Maxwell. It was a ritual that went on for years.   

Friends said that Marilyn was the great — and secret — love of Bob Hope's life. He always hoped that one day they would be married but on March 21, 1971 that dream was shattered for good. 

At 49, Marilyn Maxwell was found dead in her Beverly Hills home, apparently of natural causes. Hollywood friends like Hope, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby all paid for her funeral expenses...

FORGOTTEN ONES: MARILYN MAXWELL

She was often called "the other Marilyn", and like Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Maxwell had an equally short and tragic life. Maxwell was born Marvel Marilyn Maxwell on August 3, 1921. Her parents tried to get her in show business at a young age, and she was trained as a dancer as early as age 3. Miss Maxwell's show business career began when she was a child under the tutelage of her piano-teacher mother, Mrs. Harry E. Maxwell of Clarinda. After leaving Clarinda when Marilyn was five, Mrs. Maxwell toured the country as an accompanist. Harry Maxwell died in 1950 at Tabor, where he farmed. Mrs. Maxwell died in 1951. Miss Maxwell missed the funerals of both her parents because she was on USO tours for American servicemen around the world.

Maxwell started her professional entertaining career as a radio singer while still a teenager before signing with MGM in 1942 as a contract player. The head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, insisted she change the "Marvel" part of her real name. She dropped her first name and kept the middle. During the 1940s, she also appeared with Bing Crosby on his "Kraft Music Hall" radio program. Maxwell never made it really big in Hollywood but some of her film roles included Lost in a Harem (1944), Champion (1949), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951), and Rock-A-Bye Baby (1958). The Christmas carol classic "Silver Bells" made its debut in The Lemon Drop Kid, sung by Maxwell and Hope.

On television, Maxwell appeared twice as a singer in the second season (1955–1956) of NBC's The Jimmy Durante Show. On May 16, 1957, she guest starred on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. In the 1961-1962 television season, Maxwell played Grace Sherwood, owner of the diner on ABC's 26-episode Bus Stop, a drama about travelers passing through the fictitious town of Sunrise, Colorado.

She married MGM actor John Conte in 1944 in The Little Church Around the Corner in New York City; they divorced two years later. Her second marriage to restaurateur Anders McIntyre lasted one year. Her third marriage to writer/producer Jerry Davis produced a son, Matthew who was born on April 26, 1956. They divorced after six years of marriage.

According to Arthur Marx's Bob Hope biography "The Secret Life of Bob Hope," Marilyn Maxwell had a long term affair with comedian Bob Hope. He gave her constand work in the 1940s and 1950s on radio as well as touring with him on his many USO shows. The affair with Maxwell was so open that the Hollywood community routinely referred to her as "Mrs. Bob Hope." Also during this time it was reported that Marilyn had an affair with singer Frank Sinatra. The affair was briefly touched upon in the television movie "Sinatra" in 1992.

Despite finding love in all the wrong places, Maxwell was widely loved among her friends. A close friend of Rock Hudson, she helped closet his homosexuality by making frequent public appearances with him and teasing reporters about how their relationship was "only a friendship."

By the 1960s, alcohol had taken its toll on Maxwell's career and looks. At her lowest point in 1967 she was discovered to be performing in a burlesque show as a stripper in Queens, New York. On March 20, 1972, Maxwell's 15-year-old son arrived home from school and found her dead at the age of fifty of an apparent heart attack, after she had been treated for hypertension and pulmonary disease. Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Jack Benny were honorary pallbearers at her funeral. Hope gave a memorable eulogy, and Rock Hudson looked after her son during the funeral and years afterward.

Marliyn Maxwell did not receive the fame that Marilyn Monroe did, but listening to her old radio broadcasts, she had a happiness in her voice I hope never left her. Thankfully the radio shows and sporadic movies she made are testaments to what a talent she was. Her television and movies are evidence of her beauty, but her radio shows really capture her personality in her voice. Despite her poor choices in life, Marilyn Maxwell really deserves to be remembered...