- Diane Linkletter
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Diane Linkletter Born October 31, 1948
Los Angeles County, California, U.S.Died October 4, 1969 (aged 20)
West Hollywood, California, U.S.Diane Linkletter (October 31, 1948 – October 4, 1969) was the daughter and youngest child of popular American media personality Art Linkletter, and his wife Lois Foerster. She was 20 years old when she committed suicide in 1969.
Contents
Biography
Not widely known to the public before she died in 1969, 20-year-old Diane Linkletter jumped out of a window of her high-rise apartment to her death in West Hollywood, California. Her death was widely reported in the media at the time, and her father blamed her death on LSD. Shortly thereafter, Art Linkletter became a prominent anti-drug campaigner.[1]
However, there is no proof that Linkletter took LSD on the day she died. Evidence suggests that she was a despondent woman and that her death was a suicide rather than a drug-related accident, though some have proposed her death may have been a murder. Her boyfriend at the time, Edward Durston, was present in Linkletter's apartment when she supposedly plunged to her death; 15 years later, Durston was also accompanying actress Carol Wayne during her fateful trip to Mexico—during the trip, Wayne was found dead in a shallow bay after a heated argument with Durston. Following Linkletter's death, an investigation was conducted by the Los Angeles Coroner's Office; it was determined that Linkletter died from "multiple traumatic injuries," apparently sustained from the fall, and that she had no drugs in her system at the time of her death.[1]
Diane Linkletter had led a troubled life before any alleged involvement with drugs. In 1965, at the age of 17, she eloped, and her father used his influence to get the marriage annulled.[2]
Linkletter and her father won the 1970 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for We Love You, Call Collect.[3] The record, which had gone unreleased before Diane's death, was released in November 1969 and sold 275,000 copies in eight weeks. According to Art Linkletter, royalties from the sales went "to combat problems arising from drug abuse."[4]
In popular culture
On October 5, 1969, the day after Diane Linkletter's death, filmmaker John Waters made a nine-minute film entitled The Diane Linkletter Story, a fictionalized version of the events surrounding Linkletter's death.[5]
Bobby Darin wrote and released a single titled "Baby May" in 1969. "The song was inspired by the suicide death of Art Linkletter's daughter. In the record's publicity material Darin said he felt Linkletter could have assumed more responsibility, and the lyric included the line 'Baby May had to pass away to hear her Daddy say I was wrong'."[6]
References
- ^ a b Mikkelson, Barbara (2005-08-15). "The Scarlet Linkletter". snopes.com. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/linkletter.asp.
- ^ Sydney J. Harris, Chigago Sun-Times, April 14, 1970
- ^ Grammy Awards of 1970
- ^ "Profits of Tragedy". Time. 1970-01-05. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943151,00.html. Retrieved 2008-01-16.
- ^ Plea, Robert L.. Filthy: The Weird World of John Waters. p. 54. ISBN 1-555-83625-9.
- ^ Jeff Bleiel, That's All: Bobby Darin on Record, Stage and Screen, Tiny Ripple Books 2004)
External links
Categories:- American musical theatre actors
- American television actors
- Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
- Grammy Award winners
- People from the San Fernando Valley
- Suicides by jumping from a height
- Suicides in California
- Television personalities who committed suicide
- 1948 births
- 1969 deaths
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