How did I miss this ?

In 1944 the movie “Gaslight”, a mystery-thriller starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman was a huge success. I was just eleven at the time but I do remember being fascinated and scared by it and from that time on I would always go to see any movie that featured Charles Boyer.

Although he was a retiring person off-screen, Boyer left female movie-goers swooning and, somewhat like Sean Connery today he seemed to get even more attractive with age. I thought I knew a lot about his life but it was a complete surprise to me this week when I came across an article referring to prominent actors and actresses who had committed suicide and he was among them. How did I miss this?

Then I saw that he died in 1978 and that was the year that we moved to North Carolina. So that explained how I missed hearing about his death but I was still amazed that it was a suicide. I knew that he had wed the British actress Pat Paterson in 1934 and that it was a happy and successful marriage. What I didn’t know was that he retired in the mid 70’s to care for his wife who was diagnosed with cancer. She died in 1978 and just two days later the grief-stricken actor took his own life.

I don’t know exactly why this affected me so much now. I guess it took me back to a simpler time when a girl on the brink of becoming a young lady could be totally enthralled with an older man with a throaty French accent …and then to find out that his actual life ended in tragedy “just like in the movies”.    So sad…