This page is dedicated to one of Hollywood’s most painful and often misunderstood subjects—the suicides that punctuated the industry’s history and exposed the profound human cost of fame, pressure, isolation, and silence. Behind the glamour, contracts, premieres, and carefully managed public images were men and women grappling with personal despair, mental illness, career collapse, financial ruin, or private grief that the studio system and gossip culture rarely acknowledged with compassion. These stories are approached here with restraint and respect, not sensationalism, seeking to understand the circumstances, cultural forces, and unanswered questions surrounding each death while honoring the individuals behind the headlines. In revisiting these tragedies, this page aims to replace rumor with context, myth with fact, and judgment with empathy—recognizing that Hollywood’s brightest lights sometimes cast the longest and darkest shadows.

Note: If you or someone you know is going through a tough time, please reach out for help. You can call or text 988 anytime in the US and Canada to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (formerly the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline), or text "HOME" to 741741 to connect with the Crisis Text Line. These services are free, confidential, and available 24/7.

The Girl Behind the Fans: Faith Bacon’s Glittering Rise—and Chicago’s Last, Dark Window

They sold Faith Bacon the way show business sells every beautiful miracle it can’t quite explain—like a new light bulb for the national imagination. “America’s Most Beautiful Dancer,” the billboards promised, and for a while the country believed it, because it wanted to. She was born Frances Yvonne Bacon in Los Angeles on July 19, 1910, a city that specialized in making legends out of runaways, ingenues, and nervous hope. But Faith didn’t rise through the tidy Hollywood ladder of bit parts and studio grooming; she rose through the hotter, rougher air of burlesque, where applause could turn to police whistles in the same breath and “art” was whatever survived the next raid.

Read more »

What we do...

Welcome to the shadows of Los Angeles, where glittering dreams curdle into gossip, scandal, and sorrow. Here we unveil the crimes, cover-ups, and catastrophes that the studios—and the city—tried their best to bury.