In 1950, The Sun New Pictorial reported four of these on one page of its December 28 edition.
Such things seem even to be the fate of the beautiful and famous.
Kim Schmidt was born in Germany in 1947 to Paul and Rosemarie Schmidt.
Her family immigrated to Australia. Schmidt and her four siblings attended Eildon Primary School and then Alexandra High School. Their parents ran a motel in Eildon.
Kim Schmidt grew to be a beautiful woman. From a young age, she was interested in acting and theatre. In 1972, at the age of 25, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career. Until acting roles came her way, she worked editing magazines and then as script girl on various movies.
Ms Schmidt landed some minor TV roles in TV shows, such as The Rookies, Police Story, and Barnaby Jones.
She also appeared in a few minor films, such as The Man from Acapulco, The Killer Elite and The Odessa File.
In 1977, it appeared that her star was rising. She played a role as a police woman in Spectre, a movie made for television.
Her role was uncredited, but she met Gig Young playing the lead role to hers as his assistant.
Gig Young, born Byron Barr in St Cloud, Minnesota, in 1913, was more than 30 years older than Schmidt.
An actor who played co-star as the lead’s brother or friend, Young was in many movies of the 50s and 60s.
By 1977, Young’s career was on the rocks despite winning an Academy Award for his role as the drunken dance emcee in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Young often played a drunk, and he played the role well. He was a drunk. He had been fired from several movies for his inability to remember or deliver his lines.
Furthermore, he had been married four times, most notably to Elizabeth Montgomery. Their marriage lasted seven years until Montgomery divorced him because of his alcoholism.
Young had mental health issues. In fact, he had been hospitalised several times and had even undergone electroconvulsive shock therapy.
Like many an optimistic lover, the young Schmidt believed that she could help Young with his depression and his anxiety.
Schmidt fell in love with Young and moved into his high-rise apartment in New York City.
She also supported him financially because his work had dried up. Alcoholism made him too unreliable, and he was growing too old to play the second string leads that had built his career.
On September 27, 1978, the two married at City Hall in New York.
He was 64, she was 31. At the time, they were working on Game of Death, the last and incomplete film of Bruce Lee.
On October 19, 1978, three weeks after their wedding, their bodies were discovered in Young’s apartment by their maid.
Police investigations found that Young had shot his young bride in the head with his .38 revolver. Then he shot himself in the head.
Young’s Oscar statuette for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was lying near their bodies.
Police found no suicide note. There were signs neither of a struggle nor forced entry into the apartment.
Speculation as to why Young shot both his wife and himself ranges from Young suffering a psychotic episode or a terminal illness or perhaps that he was envious of Schmidt’s growing success.
We shall never know. No theory can be proved or disproved from any evidence available. No reason can be given for the murder-suicide.
Gig Young is buried in the Green Hill Cemetery in Waynesville, North Carolina under his birth name, Byron Barr, along with his parents, siblings and an uncle.
His estate and his Oscar were inherited by his estranged daughter, Jennifer.
She later sold the Oscar statuette for US$157,000.
Kim Schmidt’s parents flew from Australia to claim her body. She is buried under the name Ruth Schmidt Young and shares a grave with her parents in the Eildon Weir Cemetery, Eildon, in Victoria.
– John Barry
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