[Update 2: Margaret Campbell and Gertrude Olmstead in “Monte Carlo,” 1926. ]
[Update: Please congratulate Mike Hawks for identifying the mystery gal on the left right!]
Here’s another mystery photo, courtesy of Steven Bibb. Thanks!
June 29, 1939: Campbell’s son, Campbell McDonald, admitted killing his mother in her sleep and was committed to Mendocino State Hospital.]
There’s another photo on the jump….
Margaret Campbell in an undated photo
ladailymirror.com 
The young lush dish could be a Gish. Which one? Dorothy would be the one for me. But then, I always had a yen for Lillian.
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Kate Bruce and Sally O’Neil?
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the younger has a jean arthur look to her.
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I vote for Gertrude Olmstead as the younger lady.
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Is the younger lady Florence Vidor?
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Mabel Van Buren on the left.
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I believe it’s Alice Terry on the right in the first picture.
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Actually it’s Mae Murray on the right.
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What happened to MCDonald’s son? And did he kill those other people as well?
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@Mary: No, the other bludgeoning on the UCLA campus was eventually solved. I’ve been meaning to write about it (so many stories, only one Larry Harnisch). The last I find in The Times’ clips is her son going to Mendocino State Hospital.
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The article stated that both bodies had been “criminally mistreated”. Does that mean what I think it means?
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@Rotter: Hard to say. The newspapers were cryptic in their euphemisms, particularly The Times. I would check in the Examiner, the Herald-Express and what other papers I could find before even venturing a guess.
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I don’t have access to California papers, but I did find these other sources…notice the first, which tells the whole story that Campbell’s son was wrongly implicated:
Silent film actress Margaret Campbell was sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death with a hammer in 1939. The killer was originally thought to be her son with her former husband, German-born actor Josef Swickard. The son was also charged with two other murders — a Russian dancer, Anya Sosyeva, who was bludgeoned to death, and actress Delia Bogard, who survived the original attack. LA police eventually arrested DeWitt Clinton Cook, who confessed and was sent to San Quentin, where he died in the gas chamber in 1941. Swickard died in 1940 from natural causes. He was falsely rumored to have jumped from the Hollywood sign.
The Evening Independent June 29, 1939
BEATEN TO DEATH
The half nude body of Mrs. Margaret Campbell, 56-year-old former silent screen actress, was found lying across a bed in a Hollywood boarding house. Near her head was found a blood-stained claw hammer, apparently the weapon with which she had been beaten to death. Police are seeking her son, Campbell McDonald, 25, former WPA crossing watchman.
MOON SLAYER IS SOUGHT IN THREE DEATHS
Blond wig, apartment key clues in murder of actress
Hollywood, June 29-AP
Police studied two clues today – a blond wig and an apartment key – as they grouped for a link between the brutal and sordid slaying of a young dancer and an elderly actress. The clues were found on the bloodstained bed with the body of Margaret Campbell, 56, silent screen player and more recently a dramatics instructor at Los Angeles City college. She was killed early on Monday with a hammer.
Bore woman’s number
The Key bore the number ”208” – which is that of the apartment occupied by Anya Sosoyeva, blonde Russian dancer bludgeoned to death on the college campus last Feb. 24. Miss Sosoyeva’s roommate, Beulah Stanley, told investigators at that time that a key to their suite had disappeared. Officers said the one found in Miss Campbell’s room does not now fit the door. They were checking to determine if locks had been changed.
Homicide Bureau Captain Dalton R. Patton indicated that the blond wig might be of particular importance. Chief characteristics of the Sosoyeva slayer, said a witness who saw him flee, was a shock of blond hair.
Son still missing
Meanwhile, Miss Campbell’s son, Campbell McDonald, 25-year-old student, was still missing. Police have ordered his arrest for questioning. He and his mother occupied the same apartment and neighbors said he had not been seen since Sunday.
Patton and his aides were attempting to determine whether McDonald, through his mother, might have known Miss Sosoyeva and Delia Bogard, 17-year-old dancer wounded seriously in a similar attack March 28. Earlier efforts to lay the Sosoyeva and Bogard assaults to a man afflicted with ”moon madness” were intensified as officers noted that the Campbell slaying also occurred at the time when the moon was approaching fullness.
St. Petersburg Times, July 1, 1939
YOUTH ADMITS HE KILLED MOTHER
HOLLYWOOD-AP
Stolid Campbell McDonald re-enacted for police and photographers today the manner in which, officers said he told them, he beat to death his mother, Margaret Campbell, a former actress. Taken to the Hollywood rooming house where he and his mother occupied a single room, the 25-year-old student stood over a bloodstained bed and swung again the claw hammer with which he admitted attacking the WPA dramatics teacher early last Monday. He told police his mother had threatened to put him in ”an institution.”
Time Magazine, September 11, 1939
Campus Killer. A bad place for girls to be at night was the lovely, leafy campus of Los Angeles City College and the neighborhood around it. Anya Sosoyeva, 32, a blonde dancer and drama student, was bludgeoned to death in one of its lanes last February. Bludgeoned, robbed (of 35¢) but not killed was Delia Bogard, 18, who sometimes danced in L. A. C. C. plays. Bludgeoned, raped and left to live was Nursemaid Myrtle Wagner, 17. Hammered to death while abed at home was Mrs. Margaret Campbell, 56, a onetime actress who taught drama at L. A. C. C.
Margaret Campbell’s lackwit son confessed that he killed her, was adjudged insane by two alienists. Last week Los Angeles police, on mass guard in the Hollywood area, nabbed a bearded, slender runaway just after a robbery was reported. In his car they found a 2 by 4 bludgeon, at his home shoes which fitted the cast of a footprint near where Delia Bogard was felled. De Witt Clinton Cook, 20, a marauding printer who had learned the fine points of robbery at an Iowa reform school, confessed that he killed Anya Sosoyeva, struck down Delia Bogard, yielded to “an uncontrollable impulse” and raped Myrtle Wagner after he had looted her employer’s home. On his way to the campus to show police and newsmen how he had worked, he was allowed to visit a barber, get rid of his beard. Publicity-wise, cinemad Los Angeles prosecutors and police then had Killer Cook put on an act as fantastic as it was morbid. For grinding sound cameras (ostensibly at hand to record evidence) a neighborhood blonde impersonated Anya Sosoyeva. Clinton Cook stalked the willing stand-in as he had stalked the dancer, socked her with a roll of paper, dragged her to the spot where he had left dying Anya. Next day he pleaded guilty, later changed his plea to “not guilty” after talking to headline-conscious Prosecutor Buron Fitts, who will get much publicity at the trial.
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@Ronald: Thanks! I have researched the DeWitt Clinton Cook case to write something about it and mistakenly said the Anya Sosoyeva killing was at UCLA rather than L.A. City College. So many stories, only one Larry Harnisch.
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