May 15, 1957
Los Angeles
The papers called her an actress, but she was never in anything but
trouble and her only talent was for raising hell. Even the gossip
magazines quit working with her because they didn’t trust her. She
was only famous for being infamous.
Her name was Ronnie Quillan. At least that was the one she used in
court to testify about feeding stories to Confidential magazine. The
police had a dozen names for her: Mary Wolfe, Ronnie Blair, Cynthia
Ainsley and all sorts of variations on them. Even her death records
list two names: Veronica Ainsley and Mary Quillan, as if nobody could
make up their mind what to call her.
The other little boxes on her death records are vacant: The year, month
and day she was born or even where. All we have are what might be her
mother’s name–Zwebels–and when she died: Oct. 5, 1962.
She was married at least twice. Her first marriage, to Joe Quillan, who worked
on the script for "Son of Paleface," was in Greenwich, Conn., in 1939.
The second, to 21-year-old Daniel E. O’Reilly, was in Tijuana in 1956
and annulled a year later.
She brawled with her husbands and her boyfriends. One of the worst fights was in
1949, when she and French singer Roland Gerbeau slashed each other with
razor blades and her right ear was nearly severed. The next year, she
slashed singer Billy Daniels‘ face with a butcher knife and it took 35
stitches to close the wound. He told police she had been taking pills
all evening.
In early 1957, she used a 2-by-4 to smash a picture window at her
former mother-in-law’s home in a fight over a TV set. Two days after
she got out of jail for that rampage, a cabdriver picked up her at 6
a.m. while she was wandering in front of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel,
wearing pajamas and a coat. She was carrying a stuffed dog named Bowie
and a stolen .38-caliber Colt. She said she wanted to go to a pawnshop–but he got one look at the gun and took her to the police.
It’s not clear exactly when she turned to prostitution. Her only
documented arrest was in April 1955. In August of that year, Whisper
magazine ran a story calling her "Hollywood’s No. 1 Madam."
About the same time, she began feeding stories to Confidential
magazine, receiving $1,500 (10,747.93 USD 2006). One of them, which
appeared in the January 1955 issue, concerned an encounter she
supposedly had with Desi Arnaz in Palm Springs during World War II. She
was also the source for information on a story about Billy Daniels in
the July 1955 issue. She may have also contributed to stories about Ava Gardner and Herb Jeffries.
Testifying in the 1957 criminal libel trial against Confidential,
Quillan said Confidential Publisher Robert Harrison was after dirt on
Hollywood figures. Her face etched with lines of hard living, The Times
said, she testified: "He told me he wanted stories primarily dealing
with … activities of people in the Hollywood movie colony, and the
more lewd and lascivious, the more colorful the magazine." But after a
few stories, former Confidential editor Howard Rushmore fired her because he thought she was too
unreliable.
During the Confidential magazine trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. William L. Ritzi asked: "What was your occupation?"
"I was engaged in prostitution," she said.
The next year, she tried to kill herself. Then she dropped from sight.
In 1962, Paul Coates found a letter in one of his files that she had written from jail:
"All the scandal magazines and newspaper characters should be very
happy," she said. "They prophesied that I’d wind up in the gutter and
here I am. They really ought to have some sort of organization for
ex-Hollywood glamour girls, because I’m petrified with fear. I’ve never
been so friendless in my life. When I got out of Norwalk after
recovering from a nervous breakdown, I thought maybe I could change my
life. But here I am back in County Jail. I guess it can’t get any worse
than this for me."
And sometime on Oct. 5, 1962, she stumbled into a doctor’s office after
receiving a vicious beating. She died before she could say what
happened. Veronica Ainsley/Mary Quillan was 44. Maybe.
A google map of Ronnie Quillan’s life.
Bonus fact: On Jan. 3, 1958, in New York City, Confidential editor Howard Rushmore killed his wife and committed suicide after he forced his way into the taxicab in which she was riding. He once testified: "Some of the stories are true and some have nothing to back them up at all. Harrison many times overruled his libel attorneys and went ahead on something."
Email me
