Wallace Reid

"[Another] major scandal that sent shudders through Hollywood was the drug-related death of popular actor Wallace Reid. Blonde, blue-eyed, handsome, musical and athletic, Reid became a star when he was only 23. The movie that catapulted him to fame was Enoch Arden in which he co-starred with Lillian Gish. His best performance was widely considered to be in Forever, the silent movie version of Peter Ibbetson.

Behind the scenes and unbeknownst to his adoring public, Reid was addicted to morphine. When his dependency began to affect his ability to work, the studio bosses did not immediately fire him. He was too valuable for that. Instead, they brought in doctors to try to break his addiction. They were unable to get him to stop taking narcotics. Eventually he agreed to go to the Banksia Place Sanitarium to be cured of his addiction. Unfortunately, Reid was so powerfully addicted that giving it up made him sick. He came down with pneumonia, then suffered a fatal heart attack.

Motion picture executives could not keep the truth about the cause of Reid's death out of the newspapers. This was a time when the usual term for an addict was "dope fiend" and having a supposedly wholesome star stuck with this label after death did little to improve the reputation of Hollywood as a 'den of iniquity.'"

SOURCE: Denise Noe, Court TV's "Crime Library."