I wonder, if you tried hard enough, could you locate the exact point at which reality segues effortlessly into fiction? Leafing through Kenneth Anger’s “Hollywood Babylon II”, a book documenting Hollywood scandal and tragedy through the ages, I came across the following entry:
“GEORGE ZUCCO. This wonderful character actor, the High Priest of Satanic Atlantis, he of the disturbing glassy eyes, and quick, disconcerting gestures and cat-purr voice, ended his days in the lunatic asylum, after he began believing he was the crazed villains Monogram and PRC kept paying him to play. The High Priest of Mu/Egypt/Atlantis was led away by the fellas in the white coats, dressed to the nines in borrowed Monogram bogeyman finery.
George’s faithful wife and daughter moved into the asylum with him, hoping their presence would restore his grasp on reality. Quite the contrary. George Zucco slipped away in the Atlantic fogbanks, finally, one midnight dreary, working himself into a paroxysm of fear and loathing, screaming he was being stalked by the Great God Cthulhu!
George Zucco died in the madhouse, from fright. The following midnight, Mrs. Zucco and daughter, unable to live without their meal ticket, unable to face life in Tinseltown without George, joined him in death.”
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