It all turned to shit Forty-four years ago today

For Alan Ladd (Senior, that is), that is;

Pardon me, but Mother hasn't returned from Mass yesterday. She said something about Cesar Romero taking her to Tiny Naylor's for breakfast after Church, but that was thirty hours ago. Anyway, she must have planned on not being here, because she left a whole bunch of notes that she says that Wikipedia told Dorothy Parker who was looking for Dramubuie in our villa, anyway, I digress: Alan Walbridge Ladd (September 3, 1913 – January 29, 1964) was an American film actor. He was famous for his emotionless demeanor and small stature.In the majority of his films, he played either the hero or a bad guy with a conscience. He appeared in dozens of films in bits and small roles, including Citizen Kane. Most of these barely kept him and his household afloat. (He had married a high-school acquaintance, Midge Harrold, with whom he had a son.) His stepfather died suddenly and then his mother, to whom he was intensely devoted, killed herself by eating arsenic-laden ant paste. Ladd, who had suffered on and off from depression throughout his youth, lost his greatest champion and with her, one of the few strong supports for his fragile self-esteem. He still chafed at the negative effects his height had on his career and his self-image. His marriage was in trouble, too, for he had fallen in love with Sue Carol, his agent – and a married woman.
It was at this point that Carol made Ladd's career. Ladd and family on vacation aboard SS Normandie in the late 40s> She got him a screen test for This Gun for Hire (1942). His performance as a hitman with a conscience made him a sensation. Ladd went on to become one of Paramount Pictures' most popular stars. Even a brief timeout for military service with the US Army Air Corps' First Motion Picture Unit did not diminish his popularity. None of his subsequent films of the 1940s were as notable as This Gun for Hire, but he did appear to good effect in Raymond Chandler's story The Blue Dahlia alongside the similarly diminutive Veronica Lake (5'2" or 1.57 m), with whom he teamed in several films. He also was well cast in the 1949 version of The Great Gatsby.
He formed his own production companies for film and radio and starred in his own syndicated series Box 13, which ran from 1948 to 1949. Ladd became most famous for his starring role as a gunfighter in the classic 1953 western Shane. Ladd made Quigley's Top 10 Stars of the Year List 3 times, in 1947, 1953 and 1954. Age and alcohol began to affect both his appearance and his personal life. In 1962, he nearly died from a self-inflicted gunshot that was explained in various ways at various times.
In 1963, Ladd co-starred in one of the biggest film productions of his career, not as a leading man but as a supporting actor. Although the response to the film, The Carpetbaggers was generally poor, Ladd's performance as the washed-up cowboy star Nevada Smith was generally conceded to be among his finest, and a bright spot in the film.
But Ladd would be dead before the film was released.He died in Palm Springs, California of an acute overdose of alcohol and sedatives at the age of 50, a probable suicide. On his death in 1964, Ladd was entombed in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.