automotive websites

From James Dean to Grace Kelly – nine iconic celebrity car crash deaths – Mirror Online

From James Dean to Grace Kelly – nine iconic celebrity car crash deaths

A fresh book looks at the tragic circumstances of the fatal road crashes involving celebrities which have fascinated the world

• Share
• Comments

• Eighteen:51, thirty one MAR 2016

• Share
• Comments

From James Dean to Princess Grace of Monaco, some of the most iconic and celebrated starlets have died in awful circumstances.

A fresh book inspired by the public fascination with celebrity deaths in car crashes has bought together some of the most tragic accidents.

Some deaths have been through excessive speed, others alcohol and a handful evidently just bad luck.

Death Drive by design experienced Stephen Bayley looks at the historic place of the automobile in the modern world and investigates the circumstances of twenty celebrity car crashes.

Many of the case studies the author says – including James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, Princess Grace, Albert Camus and Jackson Pollock – were attracted to self-destruction and that was “memorably achieved” in a dramatic car crash.

Stephen said: “Cars have a talismanic quality.

“No other manufactured object has the same disturbing allure. More emotions are involved in cars than in anything else we make or use: vanity, cupidity, greed, aggression, social competitiveness, cultural modelling, desire and fear.

“But when all this mixed bag of perverse promise and certain threat finishes in the catastrophe of a fatal collision, these same talismanic qualities acquire an extra dimension and stimulate a fascinated, while appalled, voyeurism.

“Who can take their eyes off a traffic accident? No matter how reluctant, we are fascinated. The more so if a celebrity is involved.”

Here are nine stories from the book.

1) James Dean

When the Rebel Without a Cause actor died in one thousand nine hundred fifty five he was just 24-years-old and had made just three films.

He had taken possession of the car in which he died – a silver Porsche five hundred fifty Spyder – just nine days before.

On September 30, after being told by fellow actor Alec Guinness “If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week”, Dean left Los Angeles accompanied by a mechanic to drive to a race meeting.

Dean was evidently driving quick and overtaking slower vehicles when a one thousand nine hundred fifty black and white Ford Tudor pulled out to turn left and the Porsche hit it head-on.

The passenger in the Porsche survived but Dean died and was instantly immortalised as was the car wreckage which was put on macabre public demonstrate until in 1960. After a road safety exhibition it vanished and has never been found.

Two) Jackson Pollock

In one thousand nine hundred fifty six the famous “drip” painter was in decline, his strenuous drinking had left him in a “death trance”, according to his biographer.

He had split from his long term fucking partner and was with former model Ruth Kligman when they went to a party on August eleven in Pollock’s light blue Oldsmobile Rocket 88.

It was one of the fastest cars of the day and the artist had been drinking all afternoon when he crashed the car at Ten.15pm doing 70mph after it left the road and flipped.

In his book Stephen Bayley writes: “The crash scene, displaying the upturned car, was very publicised and and helped confirm the popular notion that artists are born under Saturn and that heroes must die youthfull.”

Pollock was just 44.

Three) Albert Camus

The French philosopher, author, and journalist died in an anonymous French village when the car he was a passenger in crashed and he was thrown forward violating his neck.

He had been travelling from Lourmarin to Paris with his publisher and family over the course of two days.

The car a Farcel Vega HK500 was a enormous powerful luxury vehicle powered by a Chrysler engine beloved of the painter Picasso and the singer Dean Martin.

Passengers in the car recall Camus telling the driver to slow down and the meals the party ate along the way included foie gras and blood sausage and potatoes washed down by fine wine.

As the car left the road the Janine Gallimard, whose hubby was driving, recalled a violent wobble before it hit two trees killing Camus and her Monsieur Gallimard.

The death of Camus, who was known to hate travelling by car, was made worse by the detect of an used rail ticket to Paris in his pocket and the skill he wrote the line “there can be nothing more absurd that to die in a car accident”.

Four) Eddie Cochran

In one thousand nine hundred sixty the American rocker who influenced the Beatles – Paul McCartney performed his song Twenty Flight Rock at an casting for John Lennon – was touring the UK.

On April sixteen he had been performing in Bristol when he hired a taxi driven by a 20-year-old local man to drive him, his gf Sharon Sheeley and singer Gene Vincent to Heathrow on his way back to America.

It was dark and when a tyre blew out on the Dagenham built Ford Consul Mark II it hit a lamp post throwing Cochran clear but he suffered fatal head injuries.

His death at twenty one made front page news in the Daily Mirror.

Five) Tara Browne

The son of a peer his mother was heir to the Guinness drinks empire and his brother was in the Irish folk band The Chieftans.

At his 21st bday guests included John Paul Getty, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

Browne lived just off the Kings Road in a house which was known for a druggy reputation – indeed he is said to have introduced McCartney to LSD.

On December Legal, 1966, after taking some of the hallucinogenic he determined to go for a drive in his fresh turquoise Lotus Elan.

Two miles away, with his mistress in the car, he failed to stop at a crimson light hit a parked truck and died of his injuries in a hospital in Fulham.

The following January his death was evidently immortalised by Lennon in The Beatles song A Day in the Life after reading of Browne’s estranged wifey children’s custody activity in a newspaper.

The song starts “I read the news today, oh boy” and develops with reference to a man who “blew his brains out in a car” who “didn’t notice that the lights had changed” and a nobody being sure “if he was from the house of Lords”.

6) Princess Grace of Monaco

Hollywood-actress-turned-royalty Grace Kelly was driving from her holiday home to Monaco when she crashed her dark green Rover P6 3500.

She had over-packed and the car was so utter of bags and hat boxes she had dismissed her chauffeur and driven herself.

She had been a successful actress but in one thousand nine hundred fifty five married Prince Rainer of Monaco who was in the process of turning the lil’ prinicipality into the playboys playground we are familiar with today.

It was September 13, 1982, and she was fifty two when her car was observed by a truck driver moving erratically as it approached a arch known as “The Demon’s Curse”.

The car smashed through a stone parapet and fell one hundred twenty feet down a hillside.

The Princess suffered a stroke but died in hospital while stonishingly her daughter Stephanie was hardly injured at all.

There have been lots of conspiracy theories, including that she was killed by the Mafia over debts of her hubby, but the road is said to be horrifying and Grace was said to be a poor driver.

The death drew headlines around the world and one American tabloid sent seventeen reporters to cover the story.

The car wreckage was examined, crushed and dumped in the Mediterranean sea.

7) Marc Bolan

He was glam rock king but in one thousand nine hundred seventy seven he was twenty nine and beginning to go to seed having put on weight when Marc Bolan crashed his Mini into a tree in Barnes, south west London.

That night he’d been to a party of Rod Stewart’s at Morton’s nightclub in Berkley Square and was travelling in purple Mini one thousand two hundred seventy five GT with his 2nd wifey the backing singer Gloria Jones.

Neither of them had on seat belt when the car left the road just after going over a railway bridge, hit a steel crash barrier and then the tree.

Bolan loved cars, he also possessed a white Rolls Royce, but couldn’t drive. His wifey who was driving survived but he died of head injuries.

The T-Rex frontman also loved Rene Magritte the Belgian surrealist, one of the artist’s most popular pictures was of a sycamore tree and called The Sixteenth of September, the same date as the crash, and the same type of tree.

8) Jayne Mansfield

Best known for her 40inch bust and her platinum blonde hair she was a 1960s American hook-up symbol.

The blonde bombshell tag was coined for her and she was signed as a replacement for Marilyn Monroe when she died by twenty Century Fox.

She lived in a pink house on Sunset Boulevard but her career was waning in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven when she left a caberet gig at The Gus Stevens Supper Club in Biloxi, Mississippi with her beau, three children and four chihuahuas.

Travelling in a one thousand nine hundred sixty six Buick Electra two hundred twenty five on a winding road at Two.25am when a truck in front of the party braked all of a sudden.

The Buick submarined underneath the back of the truck, peeling back the roof and killing Mansfield, her paramour and the driver.

In the course of the accident the starlet’s blonde wig came off leading the reporters who were soon on the scene to speculate, incorrectly, she had been decapitated.

Legislation created afterwards demanded all trucks should be fitted with a protective bar to prevent similar accidents, they were dubbed by truckers “Mansfields”.

9) Helmut Newton

The last photographer to work with Salvador Dali, Helmut Newton built his career on stylised erotic pictures.

What he did, says Bayley in his book, was to “gentrify erotica for the world of fashion”.

He worked for Vogue and took pictures of models like Jerry Hall and was commissioned in one thousand nine hundred eighty six to create the Pirelli calendar.

In two thousand four while leaving the Los Angeles hotel Chateau Marmont aged eighty three Newton drove his silver Cadillac SRX SUV into a concrete wall.

A post mortem discovered he had suffered a heart attack.

For a man who dictated style and appearance so confidently it was very mundane death.

Related movie:

---