David G.G. Bacon, far right, in “The Masked Marvel,” courtesy of Steven Bibb.
So far, the David G.G. Bacon killing is relatively pristine, at least compared to the Black Dahlia case; the killing doesn’t appear in “Hollywood Babylon” or any other similar junk, and no one has come forward — yet — to accuse their father of the killing. Even so, it has not entirely escaped the genre of crappy biographies. Really, books like “Hollywood Babylon” and Scotty Bowers’ “Full Service” are nothing but soft-core porn using the names of conveniently dead people.
I hadn’t planned to shoot holes in another “tell-all” book after the Ted Healy/Wallace Beery project, but I couldn’t pass up touching at least briefly on Darwin Porter’s purported biography from 2005, “Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel,” which was followed by “The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes” by Michael Newton, the co-author, with Janice Knowlton, of “Daddy Was the (you guessed it) Black Dahlia Killer.”
The “Masked Marvel Murder” Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
Note: This is a post I originally wrote in 2006 for the 1907 project.
In case you just tuned in, we are looking at the “Masked Marvel Murder” of actor David G.G. Bacon, who was stabbed to death Sept. 12, 1943. Bacon was apparently driving back to Los Angeles from Venice, crashed his car into a bean field on Washington Boulevard and collapsed, dying of a deep stab wound. His killing was never solved.
Note: I’m reposting an item for newer readers that I originally wrote in 2006 for the 1947project.
