Lynn Baggett

Of the dozens of waitresses employed in the busy little restaurant in Mildred Pierce (1945), there’s one who shines out from the rest -- a tall, elegant young woman who flits gracefully back and forth across the screen once or twice every few shots. She’s so beautiful, it’s hard to believe no one notices her, but they don’t -- Wally Fay has eyes only for Mildred herself, and Monte Beragon’s too busy pitching woo at Mildred’s awful daughter, Veda, so they fail to notice the waitress, who is left to toil in obscurity, gracefully balancing her tray as she weaves her way around the lead characters:

When the scene was filmed, the actress, Lynn Baggett, was nearing the end of a three-year contract with Warner Brothers, which had commenced when she’d been spotted at the age of 19 by a talent scout on her way to her job in a department store in Texas. Since coming to Hollywood, she had appeared in a dozen or so films as a background chorus girl, nurse or shop girl. The production wing at Warners might not have had much use for her, but the publicity department did, and she diligently appeared in bathing suits and glamorous gowns whenever called on to do so.

 (1)

She had a more martial aspect to her publicity stunts than most starlets, which suggests that whichever publicist she’d been given had an address book full of military contacts from a previous career: the air force boys at Kelly Field voted her “the Serpentine Lady”; the recruits at Camp Haan named her “the Triple-A girl” (the As stood for “adorable, amicable and amorous”); and she was once given the job of touring night spots with “the loneliest GI” -- a soldier whose girl hadn’t written to him since he’d joined the army.⁽²⁾

When her three years were up, Warner Brothers didn’t renew her contract. The edge might have been taken up this disappointment by the fact that around that time -- the end of 1945 -- she'd become romantically involved with the movie producer, Sam Spiegel, whom she married three years later. At the time, Spiegel -- 20 years her senior -- was more famous for his A-list parties than for the films he made (this was long before he produced pictures like The African Queen (1951) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962)), but that was probably just what Lynn felt she needed. Budd Schulberg described the parties as “very high class mosh-pits” that could give young actresses looking for work a chance to get on the ladder.⁽³⁾ However, it didn’t work quite that way for Lynn. It’s true that, after she hooked up with Spiegel, she started to get speaking roles, but there were only a handful of them and none were large. One, in Douglas Sirk’s Lured (1947), amounted to little more than a cameo -- two brief scenes as the woman who is jilted by George Sanders in favour of Lucille Ball:

Her biggest role was as the wife of the murdered Mr Phillips in DOA (1950). She had more to do in this movie, but, again, she appears in only two short scenes. When we first meet her, she’s a tragically bereaved wife who’s bearing up as well as can be expected, and the next time we see her, she’s terrified that the desperate and demented Edmund O’Brien might throw her off her balcony:

In these small roles where she's able to do some acting, she does a perfectly adequate job -- true, she has no great presence or screen charisma, but she’s not at all bad. So why did she get nowhere? An early problem appears to have been that she just wasn’t too bright. Arthur Laurents, the playwright, said of her: “She was very sweet, and very dumb,” and one producer’s wife described her as “foolish, with no brains at all”. Not only that, but “she also drank and took dope --in those days [the late 1940s] it was cocaine.”⁽⁴⁾ But that shouldn't have been an insurmountable handicap -- it’s not as if Hollywood has ever had such a big problem with sweet, dumb, beautiful girls with addiction problems. A bigger problem was that Spiegel's interest in her didn't survive long into their marriage. Their messy separation in 1952 ended any hope that Lynn's career might benefit from his influence.

However, the real reason why her career crashed to a halt is that, in 1954, she killed a nine-year-old boy called Joel Watnick:

One night in July, 1954, A Nash Rambler smashed into the rear of a station wagon that was ferrying a group of young boys back from a day at the beach. The woman who’d been driving the car stood by the station wagon and looked at the mess of glass, metal and blood that she’d created, then jumped back in her car and drove away.

Little Joel Watnick was killed in the crash -- he'd been thrown from the car onto the pavement -- and a five-year-old boy called Anthony Fell was seriously injured. The police checked nearby repair shops and came up with a car that fitted the description of the one in the crash. The woman who had brought it in would be back on Tuesday -- it looks like what everyone said about Lynn was right: she really wasn’t too smart.

When Lynn arrived to collect the car, she was arrested and charged with manslaughter. Her attorney advised her to make no statement, but the police told the press what she’d told them: “I wish I’d been killed instead of the boy … I’m so confused … I wish I were dead.” ⁽⁵⁾

Like any trial with a beautiful young defendant who is in the orbit of the movies, to whatever degree, the trial was well reported, with Lynn being referred to throughout as “the estranged Mrs Sam Spiegel”. It might have finished her even if she hadn’t been found guilty. As it was, in December 1954, at the age of 30, she was given a 60-day sentence for fleeing the scene of the accident. The judge said that Lynn's actions showed that she “lacked a feeling of human kindness and was concerned only with herself.” ⁽⁶⁾

The coda to the trial came in a humiliating wire story published in Hollywood gossip columns on new years’ eve, half way through Lynn’s sentence. After a description of the fabulous new year’s eve parties that used to be thrown at the Spiegel mansion, with Lynn, as Mrs Spiegel, glittering in jewels and satins, entertaining stars like Errol Flynn and Rita Hayworth, the article remarked that Lynn faced a very different new year’s eve that night. The journalist had travelled to the county jail to interview Lynn, and reported that she still looked poised and beautiful, despite being dressed in prison denims. While inmates marched through the huge prison dining room on their way to lunch, Lynn spoke about her old parties with their six bartenders, orchestra, bouncers to check invitations and detectives to watch the jewels, and then she reflected on the new year’s eve to come. “I doubt if we’ll stay up late, because we’ll have to get up just as early the next morning – 5.30.” She would spend new year’s day in the sewing room, patching convicts’ uniforms.

“I still don’t feel I belong here,” she said. “But in a way the judge did me a favour. This is the end of a cycle of bad luck for me. The past three years have been filled with anxiety because of my marital problems. When I get out I will divorce Sam, try to re-establish my personal life, and try to work again. I’ve been in another jail of sorts the past three years.”⁽⁷⁾

One month later, Lynn was released from jail; three months after that, she was divorced from Sam Spiegel. Aside from reports of one half-hearted publicity stunt that year, when she was photographed cycling around Beverley Hills to highlight her promise never to drive a car again, there was no sign of her for years. On her release from prison in January, she’d told the press that she wanted to return to the movies, “if anyone will take me.”⁽⁸⁾ But it looks like nobody did.

The next time anyone in the press noticed Lynn was also the last time -- 22 March, 1960, when she killed herself:

The AP story ran: “Death climaxed a long series of personal misfortunes for actress Lynne Baggett. The 32-year-old blonde was found dead in her bed, clad only in a pink shorty nightgown and white panties. There was a quantity of pills nearby.”⁽⁹⁾

Of course, her name was Lynn, not Lynne; she was 34, not 32; and she was dark haired, not blonde. Perhaps the journalist was too interested in the corpse’s underwear to get any of the details right.

The previous summer, she’d taken an overdose, but had survived. Later that year, a folding bed in her apartment had somehow collapsed on her, and she was pinned under it for nearly a week. When she was found, she was dehydrated, malnourished and partially paralysed, and had to spend half a year in hospital. She’d only just been released when she tried to commit suicide for the second time, and succeeded.

By that time, Sam Spiegel had a new wife, Betty Benson -- 30 years his junior, compared to Lynn’s 20. Years later, she talked about how Spiegel reacted to the news of Lynn's suicide: “Sam seemed to shrug it off and get on his merry way … He didn’t like things that were unpleasant or depressing -- illness or hospitals -- and he didn’t like Lynn.”⁽¹⁰⁾ Spiegel paid for Lynn's funeral, but didn't attend it.

Sources -- (1)Daily News (Nuntingdon, PA) Feb 6, 1945 (2)San Antonio Light, July 2 1944 (3)Fraser-Cavassoni, Natasha; "Sam Spiegel"; Little, Brown 2003; p87 (4)Fraser-Cavassoni; ibid; p102 (5)Traverse City Record-Eagle (MI), July 10, 1954 (6)Long Beach Press-Telegram, Dec 1, 1954 (7)Statesville Record and Landmark, May 14, 1955 (8)The Lima News, Jan 21, 1955 (9)Long Beach Press-Tel;egram, March 23, 1960 (10)Fraser-Cavassoni; ibid; p239
 

Comments

[Lance]

Super writing--I hate to say it (and lose the free entertainment) but this is really a book, you know? I'd buy it!

[Diarmid]

Thanks, Lance -- I'd buy it, too!

[Graeme]

That's a sad story. Also I'd suggest that you got the publishers to give you a free copy of the book when you write it, hey you could put it in the contract, save you a bit money. I'd also buy it, good work mister.

[Diarmid]

So that's how it's done!

[jn]

Great stuff, as always.
Please keep it coming.

[Diarmid]

Sure thing, JN. There should be another tear jerker up in a few days...

[Rob]

This continues to be an outstanding read. Fascinating information very well presented. Many thanks for all the hard work.

[Diarmid]

Thanks again, Rob. I'm very glad you're still enjoying it!

[Riley]

this is wild. just watched DOA, and was taken by the femme fatale.

thought i'd check her out on-line and here i find a hard story about a hard life.

like the guy said, you should write a book. there's got to be a books-worth of almost-has-beens for you to lament. you have the right style for it, too.

[Diarmid]

Thanks, Riley! I'm always glad when someone stumbles across a biography on this site and finds out much more than they ever expected to know about the person they were interested in, so it's extremely gratifying to read that that's exactly how it was for you. (And you're right about the amount of people there are to write about - there must be hundreds of these little stories out there in old newspapers, just waiting to be found.)

[Untouched Takeaway]

The unfortunate Miss Baggett is this week's "Movieland Mystery Photo" on the LA Times "The Daily Mirror" blog

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2010/09/movieland-mystery-photo-9.html

UT

[Charles D. (Charlie) Butts]

I am deeply saddened by the many not-too-complimentary articles about Lynne Baggett's tragic, tragic life in Hollywood and her untimely death. I had numerous dates wirth Lynne in high school back in Wichita Falls in the 1930's before I went away to college and the Air Force in WWII. Lynn was a most beautiful and sweet natured girl and my dates with her are among my fondest memories. Her mother was very nice to me and herself a lovely lady. Lynn always aspired to the movies and Hollywood and Pearl Louise Albritton )known in the movies as Louise Albritton) was the star of our high school plays. Lynn admired her as did many of us. While still i n high school Lynn was picked by, I believe, Chesterfield cigarettes to distribute their product in downtown Wichita Falls where she wore what I thought was an unbecoming unifiorm but that was her first "show biz" job. I was briefly stationed in Los Angeles before going overseas in 1942 and thought many times of Lynn, even calling her for a date but I got shipped out and it didn't come to pass. When I was in Montana in the 50's I learned of her plight and tried to contact her with my condolences and support but unfortunately I learned later of her tragic death. I do wish there was more positive comment about this beautiful yet tragic lady. My high school sweetheeart and friend Lynne Baggett is but another of those starry eyeds who got caught up in the gristmill of the glamour city, with stars in their eyes .... how much more fulfilling would her life have been had she not caught that golden ring.
Most sincerely, Carlosamigo

[diarmid mogg]

Thanks for writing, Charles.

You're right - In retrospect, I feel I shouldn't have been as critical of her as I was. I could have been nicer, and I'm sorry for causing you any sadness. I really appreciate what you wrote about her, and I'm sure she would, too.