In case you just tuned in, I am using the Wikipedia entry on Wallace Beery – alleging that he was involved in the death of Ted Healy – as a way to explore Wikipedia’s fundamental problems with accuracy and delve into Hollywood myths.  This is a slow, paragraph by paragraph analysis and, yes, it’s tedious. I hope the research drudges in the audience will find it interesting.

In Part 1, we found that Wikipedia had eight entries linking Beery to Healy’s death. Two of them were nearly identical and the rest contradicted one another – sometimes drastically. So much for Wikipedia being as accurate and reliable as an encyclopedia.

In Part 2, we began looking at the book that was cited in all the entries that listed a source: E.J. Fleming’s “The Fixers,” a book that failed to get a review from a single reputable news outlet. We also found that a main informant, Col. Barney Oldfield, most likely had no firsthand knowledge of the incident

In Part 3, we dissected a paragraph of “The Fixers” and found numerous problems.

In Part 4, we looked at a portion of another paragraph in “The Fixers” and found problems with the chronology in its version of Ted Healy’s death.

In Part 5, we contrasted the 2004 account in “The Fixers” with Albert Broccoli’s version of the incident, published in 1937, citing the Los Angeles Examiner. This is an account ignored by “The Fixers” – but not Jeff and Tom Forresters’ 2002 “The Three Stooges” – in  which  Ted Healy struck Broccoli, who didn’t fight back.

In Part 6, we examined this statement: “even more strange, the article indicated Healy died of ‘natural causes,’ the result of his alcoholism,” finding that there was nothing strange at all. The Times reported exactly the same thing.

Time for our next paragraph:

Oh, look! Another footnote.

No. 198 cites Ted Healy’s death certificate. These documents are public records in California, but it takes about six weeks to get a copy, so I’ll use other period sources instead. Yes, there is a copy on findadeath, but I like to get my own copies of documents so I can be sure they are authentic. As I have learned in the Black Dahlia case, there is lots of fraudulent material being passed off as genuine. See “How to Fake a Document” in Donald Wolfe’s “The Black Dahlia Files.”

Here are the main points of the paragraph:

–Healy’s wife saw injuries “that were ignored in the autopsy.”
–Surviving photographs of the body clearly show at least half a dozen serious head injuries.
–The documents were so patently fraudulent that Healy’s physician refused to sign any of them.
–At the direction of county coroner Frank Nance, the body was embalmed, making any further autopsy pointless.

According to contemporary news accounts, not only did Healy’s wife never see the body. She wasn’t even told he was dead until several days later:

Dec. 22, 1937, Los Angeles Times:

Dec. 23, 1937, Los Angeles Times

Dec. 24, 1937, Los Angeles Times

Healy’s widow, Betty, was still in the hospital and unable to attend his funeral. She never saw the body at all.

While we’re at it, let’s contrast this claim:

“The documents were so patently fraudulent that Healy’s physician refused to sign any of them.”

With contemporary news accounts:

And finally:

“At the direction of county coroner Frank Nance, the body was embalmed, making any further autopsy pointless.”

Here’s what actually happened:

Dec. 22, 1937, Los Angeles Times:

And:

In other words, Los Angeles County Coroner Frank Nance made a brief examination of Healy’s body after it was embalmed. The autopsy by Dr. A.F. Wagner was likewise conducted after Healy was embalmed, not before, as claimed in “The Fixers.”

On Dec. 23, 1937, The Times reported:

Because of this finding, no inquest was necessary and none was held.

To be continued.