Gene Hackman, the Oscar-winning star of silver-screen classics including The French Connection and The Conversation, was found dead on Wednesday. He was 95, and an acting great; his death was no doubt anticipated by newspapers the world over, which tend to carefully compile material for celebrity obituaries long before the event. But, to the morbid fascination of fans and the frustration of news editors, this would not be a cut and dried case. The standard odes to Old Hollywood would have to be put on ice.

Hackman and his much younger wife, the classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, were both found dead — along with their German Shepherd — in their Santa Fe home by a shaken maintenance worker. The actor was discovered in a small room near the kitchen and Arakawa, 63, in a bathroom; her hands and feet bore signs of “decomposition” and “mummification”. The press was told, with befuddling verbiage, that Hackman’s body “showed obvious signs of death”. Nothing gets by New Mexico coppers.

The dog was found in a closet in the bathroom. Near Arakawa’s head lay a portable heater, which might, detectives surmised, have crashed to the ground in the event of the pianist falling herself. Hackman, they suggested, had also had a sudden collapse. There were scattered prescription pills on the bathroom counter — the kind of visual metaphor which television producers use to suggest distress. There was no gas leak, and no carbon monoxide poisoning. So far, so intriguing.

At this stage, police have not ruled out foul play. Just as in the days following the sudden and chaotic death of British pop star Liam Payne, social media Sherlocks are dusting off their deerstalkers to settle another case, hauling along their presuppositions about the kind of man Hackman was, the kind of marriage the couple had, and the victims’ final moments.

Celebrity deaths and mysterious suicides permeate the lore of California and its exports. These subconscious connections are fatal for public speculation, and poison the waters of the rumour mill. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult, their hair cropped and all wearing brand new black-and-white Nike Decades trainers, were found dead in a rented mansion in San Diego. Another suicide cult, the Peoples Temple of Jim Jones, operated in San Francisco before its notorious decampment to Guyana, where more than 900 followers died.

Hollywood’s history is littered with famous suicides. In 1932, the British actress Peg Entwistle jumped off the “H” of the Hollywoodland Sign. Everyone knows the story of Marilyn Monroe, who coroners believe took her own life in 1962. Monroe’s All About Eve co-star George Sanders died by suicide 10 years later, leaving two notes, one of which read: “Dear world, I am leaving because I am bored.”

Depressed comedian and actor Freddie Prinze, the Sr to Nineties rom-com favourite Jr, shot himself in front of his manager. Another gloom-stalked comic, Robin Williams, took his own life in California’s Paradise Cay in 2014. There are Tinseltown tragedies everywhere, both as a result of intentional suicide and indirect suicide from incredibly hard living.

Are the deaths of Hackman and Arakawa therefore impossible to look at objectively? The mythos of fame’s underbelly certainly obscures much of the media’s compassion. Though the scene of these latest deaths is undoubtedly tantalising, and the temptation to solve the puzzle by making this tragedy part of a patchwork of sordid goings-on in a decadent world is great, we should resist. It is far easier to accept such stories when we package them into little moral lessons: here, that fame doesn’t buy you happiness, or that age-gap relationships are inherently coercive, or that celebrities are subject to a cultish weirdness which happily escapes the rest of us.

Some of these things may prove correct, but we just don’t yet know. The only thing we can count on is that social media will debase itself every single time, delighting in the spectacular schadenfreude of fallen celebrities and snuffling around for tidbits and rumours. Hackman, Arakawa and, indeed, their dog reveal what young Hollywood hopefuls never grasp: that sometimes, it’s a privilege to die in obscurity.

Samaritans can be contacted at 116 123 or via www.samaritans.org.

---

Poppy Sowerby is an UnHerd columnist

poppy_sowerby

---