Jan. 19-21, 1958

Los Angeles

Her name was Velda and she had apparently been a model in New York. That’s where she met Burt Lancaster, at right with nurse Genevieve Grigoli.
It’s not clear how well she knew the handsome leading man–at least
they were close enough that she visited him at Cedars of Lebanon
Hospital while he was recovering from an appendectomy.

Her husband, actor Allan Nixon, wasn’t sure how close they were, either. And that’s when the problems began.

"My husband read a meaning in the visit that wasn’t there," she said.
"He became angry. He was jealous. It was exaggerated out of all
proportion."

Nixon, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound former football player "cuffed me a few times," she said.

She grabbed one of the pearl-handled steak knives that he had given her
for Christmas. "I let him have it," she said. He left the apartment at 6400 Franklin Ave., then came back for his clothes. Velda grabbed a second steak knife and stabbed him again.

While Nixon was treated at General Hospital for stab sounds in the left
shoulder, left forearm, right hand and left leg, his wife was arrested
on charges of attempted murder.

"She started teasing me about seeing Lancaster," he told The Times
during an interview at the hospital. "I must have been teasing her too
and she took it serious. The next thing I knew she had a knife in her
hand."

Saying that he might have been somewhat to blame for what happened and
worried about the effect a trial might have on his acting career, Nixon
refused to press charges.

She said she was leaving him to go back to New York, but apparently they tried a reconciliation and moved to 1856 N. Vista Del Mar.
That’s where she turned on the gas, went into the bathroom and struck a
match. Velda Mae/May Nixon died Sept. 30, 1958, having been burned over 75%
of her body. She was 31.

Allan Nixon, the former husband of Marie Wilson,
eventually abandoned a faltering movie career to become an author. His
first efforts ("Blessed Are the Damned," "The Last of Vicky" and
"Nobody Hides Forever,") drew tepid reviews which noted that he had
promise and predicted that he would someday write a first-rate novel.
The Times praised his 1968 book "The Actor," saying that it was the best Hollywood novel since Jesse Lasky Jr.’s "Naked in a Cactus Garden."

He died in 1995 at the age of 79.

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