Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

Joel Thorne apparently ignored the warning and on Oct. 17, 1955, the millionaire playboy race-car driver plunged his Beachcraft Bonanza into an apartment building at 11948 Magnolia in North Hollywood, where a baptismal party was underway for Sheryll Camiel Preston, who was 7 weeks old. Thorne and eight other people were killed in the crash and fire from the flaming wreckage. Investigators said he had 90 arrests for traffic violations and got driver’s licenses in Arizona and Michigan after his California and Nevada driver’s licenses were revoked. What was left of him was further cremated and his ashes were buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York.

Quote of the day: “Don’t keep fooling around with race cars, nightclubs and continue wasting your life.”

Judge Roy V. Rhodes, lecturing Joel Thorne, who sneaked out of Cedars of Lebanon Hospital after being badly injured in a motorcycle crash to avoid paying his alimony to his ex-wife.