Dorothy Kilgallen: Murdered!

A few years back, it was announced that a movie or TV series based on Mark Shaw's book was in development.

Have there been any podcasts on her?

If I were an actress in my late 40s I’d be all over trying to get the rights to play her. Kristin Davis should have been all over this!

Dorothy Kilgallen was a drunk and a pill addict.

She overdosed.

R3 So was Lady Bird.

Yes, she overdosed while in bed reading a book she'd already finished awhile back (confirmed by friends) while still wearing a full face of TV makeup. And a few years later, her husband just happened to commit suicide, too.

Wasn't she found brutally beaten to death or jumped/got pushed out of a window?

Don't buy it. She often slurred her words on What's My Line? She loved her pills and liquor.

She got tired of people saying, "Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin" and she died while dialing her chinless support group for help

Nope. She was murdered.

Found in the wrong bed reading a book she had already finished without her reading glasses.

Also, her notes/journals were missing.

What she "knew" we'll never know, but somebody killed her for it.

Another interesting read

That chin, tho.

I see Sarah Paulson in the role. Aren't Dorothy's children still alive? What do they say?

This is slightly OT, but kind of seams into the mystery behind a public figure's death. I remember the day JFK was assassinated very clearly. My dad was at work at Sperry Rand. I remember my mother calling somebody, but it wasn't my dad. He told me he was in the men's toilet with his friend learning how to play chess. Okee, pop.

A couple of years ago I mentioned to him that Bobby Kennedy's assassination seemed like things had just gotten darker. My father, not known for his levity, simply replied, "We all knew it was organized crime that killed Bobby."

Frank Sinatra, at the final Cal Neva concert on 5th September 1963, said as an aside to the audience, "If you see Dorothy Kilgallen when you're driving a car, run her over."

She was a druggie that OD'd

All you do is have to watch "What's My Line?" from 1958 and you can see her decline right on camera.

Kennedy was killed by Oswald, the evidence is 100 miles high that he did it and did it alone.

Only a person of low intelligence and having no logical method would think otherwise. Of course in today's "math is racist," how could you expect a correct response.

Sinatra also called her "the chinless wonder."

Sinatra was known for his wit.

R14 Using your high IQ and flawless logical mind, please explain to us why Dorothy was reading a book she'd just finished, in the wrong bed, without her reading glasses but with heavy makeup on.

Hillary did it.

[quote] Frank Sinatra, at the final Cal Neva concert on 5th September 1963, said as an aside to the audience, "If you see Dorothy Kilgallen when you're driving a car, run her over."

Sinatra and Kilgallen used to be on friendly terms. Kilgallen wrote an article about Sinatra which was published across the US by Hearst newspapers. Sinatra didn’t like the article or the fact it was published nationally so he started making nasty comments about Kilgallen.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Sinatra knew about her murder. Even if he didn’t, he would still fit into a miniseries.

Who wants to help me produce this miniseries? Early 1960s “Mad Men” time period, setting is NYC, involves high profile entertainers. It will be an instant hit. I’m surprised nobody has done it already.

R11 What chin?

But her emails!!!

Cynthia Nixon and her weak chin would be good casting for Dorothy.

I think she was murdered, because there were three different barbs in her system, not just the Seconal originally mentioned, and there was pill residue in a glass. She was sitting up in bed naked with all her makeup and hair done up like it had been earlier. Her papers from her self-described work on the assassination were missing.

She and her husband Dick Kollmar weren't getting along and he and the kids were upstairs when she came in/was brought in.

It's possible Kollmar found her dead and got her into bed to make it look better, but that wouldn't explain the absurd amount of drugs in her system (She wasn't a suicide.) and where her research went.

"Sinatra was known for his wit"

... and his 20lb dick

A book I used to have described Miss Francis as *pert*, and Miss Kilgallen as...*quince-faced*.

There were a lot of suspicious “accidents” (mostly “car accidents”) involving JFK researchers and witnesses though.

^ Maybe it was Hillary & Bill practicing for the Clinton Body Count

I figure both JFK and RFK's assassinations were mob hits for having two-timed the mafia (which got JFK elected by delivering Illinois) and Sam Giancana in particular. Giancana also got mysteriously murdered.

But I'm also sure RFK was behind two murders: Marilyn's (she had called the White House and told Jackie she was having an affair with her husband and was threatening to go public) and JFK mistress Mary Pinchot Meyer who kept a diary, no doubt detailing her long affair with JFK which if published would have destroyed JFK's legacy, RFK's career and the whole Kennedy mystique.

After his death RFK suddenly developed a saintly reputation but he was his daddy's ruthless enforcer who stopped at nothing.

I know everyone here bitches about Ryan Murphy but I would really like him to do a Netflix mini series on Dorothy. I think it would be a fantastic subject matter.

The brightest star of the silver screen...

I hate most of Ryan Murphy's work but I agree he would be the perfect producer to do a series based on Dorothy's last years. Sadly, at this point her place in history is mostly forgotten yet she's a fascinating figure and very much at the crossroads of mid-20th century show business and politics.

All roads lead to Dottie. Or Dollie Mae as she's sometimes called.

Exhume them all and let's make Sunday night classy again.

"Quince-faced" is brilliant! I've been wondering which fruit it is that my cat's face/head reminds me of. Quince it is! <3

Too bad your cat isn't *pert*, r33.

Oh, but she is! Pert and quincelike. She combines the best of Miss Arlene Francis and Miss Dorothy Kilgallen.

By the way, in answer to R17,

[quote]R14 Using your high IQ and flawless logical mind, please explain to us why Dorothy was reading a book she'd just finished, in the wrong bed, without her reading glasses but with heavy makeup on.

Because she was stoned out of her mind, perhaps?

The missing papers cinches it for me.

There are only so many stories that haven’t been done to death so this would be a good one. Too much dreck in streaming. It’s like watching film school rejection pieces on loops.

Why the fuck would anybody murder an elderly gossip columnist?

Naked? I hadn’t heard that before.

If this is based on something by Mark Shaw, you sweet young things must be unaware Shaw is a nutjob conspiracy theorist. He's probably selling horse de-wormer now if he's still alive.

Mark Shaw quote: 'Triggered by a comment Belli, co-counsel for Jack Ruby that Shaw knew and briefly practiced law in the 1980s, the author decided to investigate Dorothy’s life and times and her mysterious death in 1965. By pure serendipity, and Dorothy’s guidance from the hereafter..."

Complete tangent.

I knew a piano player (as he called himself) who was a NYC club musician, often playing between the names' performances. He was in his 50's when I was 16, "adopted" by a pack of gay men in their 50s-70s. It was like hearing gay history from the participants.

Harry said late one night Sinatra was in the club with a young date. They were getting ready to close and the lights were low, but he could see that the date was reaching down and Sinatra was obviously getting a teasing hand job. Sinatra popped up and headed for the men's room. Harry saw his chance and followed him in. Sinatra was standing at the sink washing his still-hardish cock off. "Fucking cunt," Sinatra said nonchalantly. (Musicians Camaraderie -and Sinatra knew a gay piano man when he saw one, I imagine.)

Harry said it was very memorable, and Sinatra was still skinny enough that it looked even bigger in context.

Sorry for the interruption.

Was it a LEGITIMATE murder?

R37 A ton of people hated Hedda Hopper and wanted or wished her dead. She was even assaulted at least once. I can't remember who did it but someone literally kicked her in the ass.

If DK was stoned out of her mind, the last thing she'd do is pick up a book.

[quote]When Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote that Joseph Cotten and his wholesome Hers To Hold co-star Deanna Durbin were having an affair, Cotten made a phone call.

[quote]“If you mention my name in your column personally again,” Cotten said to Hopper, “I’ll kick you in the ass.” At a star-studded Beverly Hills Hotel dinner, Cotten walked up to Hopper and, as she went to sit, pulled the chair out from under her. For this, Cotten was, by his account, “toasted in champagne by all”. It seemed Hopper had been wrong: Durbin later married the film’s producer.

Joan Bennett sent Hedda Hopper a live skunk when Hedda wrote something unflattering about Joan in her column. But Bennett and Cotten were the rare Hollywood stars to publicly go up against Hopper.

Hedda's Hollywood...

Wasn’t the book Dorothy was "reading" also upside-down?

Some people read their books that way, r48.

Death bed confession?

R41 Q: What do you see in Sinatra he's a scrawny 130 lbs guido?

A: Yeah, but 30 lbs is cock.

There are too many spokes to the LHO/JFK wheel for me to feel strongly about whether or not it was a line assassin or a conspiracy. The only mitigating factor towards DK’s murder is that she was getting too close to Jack Ruby and his motivation. Isn’t “kill the killer” a classic mafia tactic? Ruby was dead within a few years from cancer, possibly a diagnosis he already knew about. Pay off a terminally ill Ruby to kill LHO and the whole thing becomes unsolvable.

FWIW, I think Kilgallen’s speech pattern is just reminiscent of an old New York accent you don’t really hear very much anymore.

It was murder. The toxicology report was fucked up. They found her in a bed that she never slept in. He Kennedy files were never found. She had them with her always. She was getting too close. The mob did the deed with the blessings of Hoover. Hoover despised her.

[quote]Why didn’t any of you tell me that DL fave Dorothy Kilgallen was murdered because she was getting too close to the truth of the JFK assassination?

Perhaps you had not yet been born, way back when this was big news.

Hoover hated her because she managed to get a jailhouse interview with Jack Ruby. Hoover was furious. Oh yeah, Melvin Belli knew all about the murders and screwed Ruby.

Hedda Hopper was not influential. She was the poor man's Louella Parsons.

R49 I know that photo is a still from a movie but there's a bunch of real pictures of Marilyn pretending to read and they never fail to make me chuckle.

Her husband, Dick Kollmar, played for both teams.

Who would DL cast as Dorothy?

Cynthia Nixon, dear. Read the thread.

I’ve always thought it was ashamed Dorothy died in 1965, when we were on the precipice of huge cultural changes. As she was a writer I wonder how she would have reacted to things and, most importantly, what hairstyles she would have had in the 70s.

I can't picture her with a shag, r61.

Or the Carol Brady/Tweety Bird pixie cut.

What's a flattering hairstyle for the quince-shaped face?

R31, Ryan Murphy would turn it into a campfest instead of presenting the world as it actually was.

R28, RFK developed a saintly reputation because he was strongly on the side of the two pet causes of the left at the time: ending the war in Vietnam and civil rights. I think he was sincere in his belief in those causes; that doesn’t preclude his being an utter bastard in many other ways.

FWIW, he has the reputation of having been homophobic even by the standards of his time; on the other hand, homophobia was so ingrained in the culture in the 1960s that it’s hard to know if RFK truly was more anti-gay than average or just indiscreet in his comments.

r65 I knew an old Swiss woman who had been Ethel's nanny - one of a multitude. She told me both Ethel and Bobby were alcoholics and the meanest people she ever worked for and the stingiest. She said neither of them paid any attention to their dozen kids who were hooligans.

r65, you're no doubt right about Ryan Murphy. What I should have said was that Murphy seems to me to be the only Hollywood producer who might be interested in telling Dorothy's story.

But actually, I'd be happier with a really intelligent and thorough documentary about her, though there must be very few of her contemporaries alive and willing to comment. I don't think her 3 children have ever participated in the few books or "real crime" TV shows about her.

NOPE. She overdosed. She was a pill head and a drunk.

I watched some video with Mark Lane, and it was laughable. False claim after false claim.

All Kennedy related conspiracy theories are complete bullshit.

Kennedy conspiracy theorists are a cottage industry. Make a fortune off it.

How fitting that Dorothy died when sophisticated NY of the 50s and 60s was also in it's death throes. I can't imagine her in a later era.

Dorothy Kilgallen burning her bra? No.

Dorothy Kilgallen hanging out on Haight and Ashbury? No.

Dorothy Kilgallen dining at Chipotle? No. Not even with the Stork Club long gone.

She got murdered just in time.

Dorothy actually sported quite an array of hairstyles and even different colors (or as many as can be discerned on b&w TV). She appeared on What's My Line?, beginning with the very first episode in 1950 (unlike Arlene and Bennett), for over 15 years, quite a record back then, and tracking her clothing and hairstyles over those years is like a history of American mid-century fashion design.

Though her hair was most often styled in a sort of page boy bob, IIRC she tried a shorter tousled sort of Gina Lollabrigida look for a while in the mid-1950s which went well with the large hoop earrings she loved and often wore throughout her years on WML. Possibly she felt they distracted from her weak chin. But her most outrageous hairstyles were in the mid-60s when she often added wiglets on the crown to hair that had been aggressively teased.

I love WML and have watched all the hundreds of episodes that are available on youtube many times.

Mystery guest, do you or have you ever worn full television makeup when going to bed?

[quote] Why the fuck would anybody murder an elderly gossip columnist?

Gossip columnists were involved with the intelligence agencies, especially the FBI. The columnists would pass gossip about important people (politicians, mobsters, celebrities) to FBI & the FBI would tell them which important people to destroy in their columns.

You never heard if Walter Winchell or Hedda Hopper? Both were engaged in blacklisting people who angered FBI/HUAC. Hedda Hooper’s first big scoop was reporting that FDR’s son was having an affair with a nurse at the Mayo Clinic. Now where do you suppose she got that information? Walter Winchell gave FBI information to arrest gangster Louis Lepke

Hoover’s FBI provided information to the American Business Consultant’s newsletter Counterattack, and to newspaper and magazine columnists covering the entertainment industry. Several of these columnists, including Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell, exposed those suspected of communist leanings in their writing. Hopper openly urged some performers be placed on the blacklist. Hopper, who at her peak could boast of 35 million readers, openly attacked performers including Charles Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor, Joseph Cotton, and Kirk Douglas, as well as director Otto Preminger. She served as one of the primary sources of information to the HUAC concerning Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr. She also published her suspicions of Trumbo returning to screenwriting, under pseudonyms, in the 1950s. The FBI investigated and found them correct.

More on gossip columnists & intelligence services:

An FBI memo, later disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act and headed Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist Hate Groups, Racial Intelligence - Black Panther Party, was sent to Hoover himself. "Bureau permission is requested to publicise the pregnancy of Jean Seberg, well-known movie actress, by [deleted] Black Panther party [deleted] by advising Hollywood gossip columnists in the Los Angeles area of the situation," it read. "It is felt that the possible publication of Seberg's plight could cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the general public."

The memo suggested that a letter from a fictitious person in which the rumour would be planted be sent to gossip columnists. Hoover approved the tactic, although he advised waiting until Seberg was visibly pregnant so that she would not suspect that her phone had been tapped.

The first paper to bite was the LA Times whose gossip columnist, Joyce Haber, duly ran the story under the headline of Miss A Rates as Expectant Mother. Although the story did not name Seberg, it gave enough clues for people to identify her: "a handsome European picked her for his wife . . . the outgoing Miss A was pursuing a number of free-spirited causes among them the black revolution . . . According [to] all those really 'in' international sources, topic A is the babe Miss A is expecting and its father. Papa's said to be a rather prominent Black Panther."

Haber's column was syndicated across the US in more than 100 newspapers. It was not long before Newsweek picked it up and printed Seberg's name.

She was devastated. Her husband wrote a furious article in the French press and Seberg took an overdose of sleeping pills but survived. That August, she gave birth to a premature baby girl who died two days later. At the funeral, Seberg opened the coffin to show that the baby was white and therefore her husband's. Her mental health deteriorated and she made other suicide attempts on the anniversaries of her baby's death. Finally, in 1979, she was found dead in a car in Paris having taken an overdose of barbiturates. She was 40, and by then married for a fourth time.

Dodo Kilgallen would have hated the changing face of mainstream American culture in the late 60s. Even with a performer as old-fashioned as Babs Streisand, Kilgallen was quoted as commenting that Streisand was being promoted, hyped and pushed for success by the Jewish lobby in the entertainment industry. I can't imagine what she would have felt or even said about Black American culture making more inroads into mainstream American lives in the late sixties.

Dorothy's life was cut short before she could reveal to the world the secret of levitation.

I remember that Philippe Halsman book of photos of famous people jumping in the air so well from my childhood, or more probably the photos from it that LIFE Magazine published, as my parents were too cheap or perhaps not sophisticated enough to buy the book.

Funny to think that back then, the very idea of serious politicians, writers, artists and performers, caught by the camera jumping, would be considered so outrageous and amusing. How far our society has come.....

[quote]but there's a bunch of real pictures of Marilyn pretending to read and they never fail to make me chuckle.

Marilyn's personal library of nearly 400 books was auctioned by Christie's in 1999. A list is complied at the link. None of these belonged to Arthur Miller as they'd been divorced for a year and all his possessions removed from her NYC apartment.

R61 "it was ashamed"

Oh, dear

Hate to say it because she's everywhere at the moment but the role goes to Olivia Colman. Others need not apply.

She looks like she should be spinning around on the top of a jewelry box, r78...

Huh! Olivia Colman's name actually might get a film made. Interesting idea.

R76 Yes there is a history of right wing intelligence officers ( CIA FBI) trying to destroy liberal actors and actresses through rumor mills. I find myself wondering sometimes about CDAN. They seem to spread the most perverted rumors about democratic celebs but no one seems to know quite who runs it. The stuff they imply are things that are meant to completely destroy people, not just run of the mill who fucked who gossip. And it is always left wing performers who they target, NEVER right wing politicians or CEOs... Call me a tin foil hat wearer but I do wonder.

Ethan Morddan claims that sophisticated NY which existed for much of the 20th century ended with Capote's black and white ball at the Plaza and I'd say he was right. Even Angela said she had her huge success in Mame and was the toast of the town just in time having it in spring of '66. NY and Broadway lost a lot of their glamour after that. NY and the US were changing big time.

Person to Person

R86 Funny, I always considered 1966 the last good year.

There was still a certain glamour, formality, elegance, restraint.

1967 was the pivotal year. 1968 washed it all way.

R85 CDAN's run (or was run) by an asshole lawyer from Austin. An obese alcoholic idiot who had some connection to Renee Zellwegger, he followed her to Hollywood or something and was stalking her. He's a rightwing moron and doesn't know anything. He makes up shit about people he doesn't like.

Excuse me while i pick my chin up off the floor after that headline, OP!

Dinah spoke to the police.

r82 I was thinking of Christina Ricca.

r85 and r89

CDAN did not start out as right wring propaganda. It evolved from someone who used to post gossip on Alt.Gossip.Celebrities. His gossip was somewhat legit then. A lot of it is archived here

Around the time of the allegedly RDJ thing and the article in VF around 2012 was when it started to change. After Trump was elected it went into right wing overdrive. Louise Mensch tracked down the owner of the site and it was some Canadian right wing media company. I forget the name. It may have been Sinclair but they are not Canadian. Or maybe the web host was there.

r89 Where did you get the fat Austin Zelwegger fan info. I have not heard that before.

She. Was. Not. Murdered.

R94 = know-it-all cunt Bennett Cerf, who just wants to show off about all the famous people he has met just in the last week alone.

[quote]Her husband, Dick Kollmar, played for both teams.

So did her boytoy, singer Johnnie Ray. And they were both said to be hung huge, making them sought after by everybody.

The Wiki about Dick Kollmar states that a couple of years before he died he disinherited his youngest son with Dorothy Kilgallen. What was the gossip about this? Why would he disinherit a teen who had just lost his mother a few years prior?

[quote] Circa 1969 or 1970, Richard Kollmar disowned Kerry, who was 15 or 16. Kerry lived with friends and in foster homes until he legally became an adult, by which time Richard was dead.

Why did Sinatra want Kilgallen dead before JFK died, R13?

Kollmar disowned Kerry due to rumors Kerry’s real father was Johnnie Ray.

[quote] Why did Sinatra want Kilgallen dead

Because she wrote a newspaper article about him that he didn’t like.

Kerry Kollmar also knew all the secrets surrounding his mother's death. What a fabulously tangled story this makes!!

Please note the large hoop earrings Dorothy is wearing in her Person to Person interview at r87 that I spoke of upthread. Dorothy was very fond of them and they were quite an unusual accessory for a waspy middle aged woman back then.

An addled old-time local broadcaster has posited that JFK killed the right-wing Dolly, a mean trick as he was dead almost 24 months at the time of her tragic passing.

That house of theirs was, how you say, overdecorated.

R104: EE-lah-ree-ah Baldween.

I’m glad to see people talking about DK. I’ve been fascinated by her story for quite a while, since I really binged What’s My Line a long time ago.

In one of the last episodes she was in, she clued that she “was working on the scoop of the Century” — obviously pertaining to getting to the real causes of JFK’s death, and she supposedly wanted to prove the Warren commission wrong, from what I saw a while ago. My finger likes to point at the DiMaggios whenever JFK is involved in anything. Perhaps DK was going to go into details about JFK and Marilyn’s intense relationship with Jackie around.

So yes, I think Dorothy Kilgallen was drugged and murdered. Possibly by mafia relating to the DiMaggio family, JFK’s mafia friends or maybe even Sinatra. She flew too close to the sun and burnt up. Dorothy herself would approve of this exhumation.

Didn’t they also not find her JFK/Oswald work? Wasn’t it missing?

OP, that story is from 2019.

I thought maybe her husband killed her and then later killed himself.

I have it on good authority that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein ordered the hit.

I’m posting this from a burner phone so nobody comes looking for me. But if you need to reference me, my code name is Weak Chin.

Her youngest son Kerry has an old blog with a few interesting stories - a party with Jayne Mansfield at the family brownstone; and the day his mom died.

R93 years ago 'Entertainment Lawyer' used to reminisce on the site. He was from Austin. He adored Renee Zellwegger and despised Matthew McConaughey. It sounded like McConaughey had dumped Renee and she couldn't get over it. He also hated the director Rick Linklater who's a friend of McConaughey's. He was always spreading gossip about McConaughey's wife who is mixed race. He was a racist along with all his other sins. I hadn't read the site in years and checked it out a couple of years ago and saw it was overrun with Trumpsters. Wasn't like that before, it was mainly gay men posting.

Odd coincidence that Earl Warren’s daughter was married to John Daly.

I wonder whether the snobbish Kilgallen looked down upon Miss Arlene Francis who was from an Armenian family and married to a (gasp!) Jew.

When I watch WML clips Kilgallen's face makes me think she is wearing a wig and might be completely bald underneath. Of the regulars Bennett Cerf was my least favorite and I loathe him, but Dodo Kilgallen was a close second. Miss Francis, in spite of her la-di-da manners, comes across as far more genuine and amiable.

Bet your ass she does, r113!

Bennett Cerf! I have always wanted some hot Daddy Action with Bennett Cerf. What a hot man.

R115, there would have been no action at all. He would have spent the entire night showing off how well-connected he was, the various famous people he had met recently and correcting every little thing you said or did. And competing with you to see who came first.

r116 speaks from experience.

Say what you will about Bennett, he was an historically important publisher—Capote, O'Hara, Joyce, O'Neill, Faulkner, Michener, Modern Library, and all of those play and musical texts. I thought he seemed a pompous ass, too, but what a legacy!

In spite of her pomposity, I don't think Dorothy was anti-Semitic....or racist or homophobic and actually more liberal than most would think. It's true that politically she was conservative but not the extreme conservatism we see today.

“Does the job involve wearing a flashy suit?”

“Do you have to force ground up barbiturates into a small woman’s mouth as part of your daily work?”

She.Was.Murdered.

She was used to wearing a blindfold. Maybe it was sex play gone wrong.

She was right about one thing:

“I’d like to know how, in a big, smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby...can stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it was a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers is keeping a ‘tight security guard’ on Oswald. Security! What a word for it!”

There are certainly less interesting people than Dorothy that have been the subject of docudramas. She had an amazing life, especially for a woman in those days. Skilled reporter, powerful columnist, New York socialite, successful radio talk show hostess, prime time TV legend, feud instigator, dogged investigator, substance abuser, gay man lover, conspiracy theorist royalty... everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end. And for all that success, she just seemed to get on everyone's nerves for one reason or another. I'd watch that movie, or miniseries, or whatever.

I do know Sara Gilbert is supposed to play her in either a play or mini-series.

Yes, Dolly was so going to get to the bottom of the conspiracy involving Jack Ruby. Unfortunately , no one bothered to let Ruby in on his complicity.

IIRC, she was found in bed - in a bedroom she never slept in

wearing a decorative bed jacket - that she hardly ever wore and certainly wouldn't have worn while alone in the house

with a book - but without her reading glasses, so she couldn't have seen anything

Mae Brussell was a radio personality and conspiracy theorist who spent her whole career from 1971 to her death in 1988 claiming that Oswald didn't kill Kennedy. She was the granddaughter of the founders of I Magin dept stores. She died of stomach cancer but a lot of her fans claimed someone murdered her by shooting her up with cancer cells. It is not even possible to give someone cancer like that.

So if we all agree Olivia Coleman is the ideal Dotty, who should play the rest of the WML panel?

Wasn’t her nickname IRL Dolly, not Dotty?

No, we don’t all agree, r129.

Her husband committed suicide soon after. That’s suspicious. Perhaps he was responsible.

^ So can we add Dick Kollmar to the list of co-conspiracists?!

It would’ve been less suspect if she’d suddenly“fallen out of a hospital window.”

I would love to see a really smart and thorough documentary on Dorothy, hopefully with her 3 kids' participation - I don't think the older two have ever spoken or written publicly about their mother. They must be in their 70s by now, if even alive. Sadly, all of the other people in Dorothy's circle are now dead and couldn't be interviewed.

But even when friends and colleagues were still alive, as I believe some of them (like Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, Mark Goodson, Tony Randall, et. al. ) were when the rather unsatisfying 1979 bio by Lee Israel was published, few if any commented for the book about her life or her death. I really wonder why.

The everlasting shroud of secrecy around Dorothy is part of what makes her story so fascinating, even today. Though I'm not sure there's much of an audience for that story under 65 any more. And I think Dorothy's fame and mystique might be very hard to explain to those who don't know anything about her.

I, personally, would dread a fictionalized film or mini-series. I feel it couldn't help but be sensationalized trash with nothing new to offer.

I liked Lee Israel's bio a lot. I agree it doesn't break any ground as far as her death, but Israel did a good job of chronicling the NYC media scene of the Forties and Fifties.

I would love to see a proper documentary produced and released.

[quote] Wasn’t her nickname ... Dolly, not Dotty?

Dolly Mae.

How cruel that Dick Kollmar tossed her son Kerry out of the house as a young teenager.

Dorothy and Karyn Kupcinet knew what would happen before anybody else!!

Everyone and i mean everyone knows that the cia killed kennedy

Her son had a blog. He wrote about his parents.

I don't know how she died, but the "why was she reading a book that she'd already read" is grasping at straws. The book may have been found nearby, but how would anyone know she'd been reading it? Was it beside her on the bed? Maybe she placed it there for some reason.

The book was open on her lap, but upside down.

How Dorothy was positioned was all wrong. Those who set her body up didn't know the basics of her life at home or current situation.

Re: the book, her clothing, her false eyelashes still on, sleeping in a different room - maybe she was so trashed on pills and booze that she had no clue what she was doing. Her husband and one of her kids (I think the other was away) were at home that night. Is it suspected that she was murdered in the house and no one was aware? After WML that night, she went to a bar with the other panelists and a contestant. She was seen sitting and talking with an unidentified man. Is it suspected that she was drugged at the bar? How would the perpetrator know that she would not succumb in the bar? She lived within waking distance of the bar. Was she murdered elsewhere and her body carried into her house? Rather bold to carry a dead body from the curb to her door.

Dorothy died on Nov. 8, 1965, age 52

It's eerie watching that episode of WML, knowing that Dorothy would be killed....ummm.....dead a few hours later.

R146 She was probably just drugged enough to be susceptible to what her perpetrator requested, such as to go home with her, and then he either injected her with something or gave her the lethal overdose to drink. Then she was placed in the wrong bedroom with all the wrong things such as a nightgown she never wore, a book she already read placed upside down, makeup and eyelashes still on, reading glasses missing, etc. And her manuscript was taken. Also she had given a copy of the manuscript which to her secretary Myrtle Verne, but days after Dorothy died her home was broken into she she was out and it was stolen.