Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

ONE

News, like a life-form, is divided into orders and classes and kinds. Thus, what was deemed worthy of note on the front page of Variety (the grosses of Todd Pickett's last four pictures, the fact that his agent, Maxine Frizelle, had been present at the death-scene, some sketchy details about the history of the house in the Canyon) was not thought appropriate for the front page of the LA Times (the fact that there were multiple bodies at the scene, suggesting some vague connection with the horrors of the Manson Murders; a brief synopsis of Todd's career; elsewhere, an obituary, and elsewhere again a sincere, if hastily edited, appreciation of Pickett's contribution to cinema); none of which was again deemed appropriate for The National Enquirer, which put together a special edition centered on the deaths of Todd, Gary Eppstadt and—as they put it—"the unfortunate, unnamed victims who were pulled down into the same spiral of decadence and death that claimed the Hollywood power-players," but padded the issue out with the Old Faithfuls: Haunted Hollywood, The Tragic Deaths of the Young and the Beautiful—Marilyn; James Dean; Jayne Mansfield— "Doomed Souls Who Paid the Ultimate Price for Fame!"; and all this gutter journalism of a high order by comparison with the real bottom-feeders, the journalists of The Globe, who printed, among countless lurid absurdities which they had clearly invented at their editorial meetings, a number of facts that were paradoxically closer to the truth of the events than anything in any other newspaper or magazine. Given their notoriously low standards of veracity, however (The Globe's editors considered crudely-doctored pictures of Pyramids hovering over the Pentagon hard news), the publication of these reports made the truest parts of the story unprintable in any other journal. The facts became tainted by association; poisoned, in fact. If it appeared in The Globe, how could it be true?

The only items of the story that appeared in every location were those that were related to the hard facts of death in Tinseltown.

Todd Pickett, everyone agreed, had been on some kind of downward spiral. The cause might be disputed, but the fact that he was no longer the Most Beautiful Man in the World (People Cover, Jan. 1993) or the Most Successful Male Star of the Year (ShoWest, five years running) was not. In the eternal game of snakes-and-ladders that was Hollywood, Todd Pickett had done all the climbing he was ever going to do. If he'd survived, it would all have been downhill from here.

There was in fact a widely-held opinion which stated that in dying young—even dying violently—Todd had made the best career move of his life. He'd gone while the going was relatively good; and in a fashion that would assure his name was never forgotten.

"For Todd Pickett fans the world over," Variety opined, "today's tragic news brings the curtain down on a stellar career filled with glorious moments of pure cinematic magic. But there must be many of those admirers who are relieved that their hero will never disappoint them again. His run of spectacular successes (all of which were produced by Keever Smotherman, who died less than a year ago at the age of forty-one) was plainly drawing to an end. All that remained was the sad, and regrettably all-too-common spectacle of a great star eclipsed."