The Mysterious Death of Cape Cod’s David Bacon

In September of 1943, witnesses saw David Bacon drive his sports car off a California highway and into a bean field. As would-be rescuers rushed to his aid, he pleaded for help. Blood soaked the interior of the car. Who had done this to him, they asked the dying man. Bacon didn’t answer then, and the question remains unanswered to this day.

Born in 1914, Bacon came from a privileged background. His parents named im Gaspar Griswold Bacon. His grandfather worked as a partner in J.P. Morgan’s financial empire and took a political turn, serving as U.S. ambassador to France. His father, Gaspar, had entered Massachusetts politics, rising to the rank of Senate president and then lieutenant governor. He peaked in a run for governor against James Michael Curley, the populist mayor of Boston.

Curley caricatured Bacon as an elite Republican. During the campaign Curley hired a Bacon look-alike to drive around and shout at public works employees to “stop leaning on your shovels.”

His parents probably expected David Bacon, born in Barnstable, to rise to prominence, as well. Educated at Groton and Harvard, the younger Gaspar Bacon took a different path, however. He wanted to act in movies. Bacon trained to fly planes and hobnobbed with the well-to-do. He was a family friend of the Roosevelts and a visitor to the White House.

ACTING CAREER Starting out in theater on Cape Cod, Bacon got friendly with Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda, then unknowns. And he would later use these and other connections to struggle up the rungs of success in Hollywood.

But there were hints at a less savory side to Bacon’s playboy life. For a brief time he lived in New York, and he was rumored to be a gigolo. With his acting career struggling to take off, Bacon moved to Los Angeles in 1939, just two years after graduating from Harvard.

In Hollywood Bacon got a screen test and a contract with aviation magnate Howard Hughes, who also produced movies. Hughes saw the name Gaspar as a non-starter and gave the young actor the stage name David Bacon.

For Bacon, the solution was to find a gay woman he could marry: singer and actress Greta Keller. The two married in 1942, and Greta soon got pregnant. Greta’s career would span nearly 50 years. She revealed later in life that they married merely for convenience so that both could pursue their careers.

MASKED MARVEL David Bacon’s acting career slowly got off the ground in 1943. He had small roles in Hughes’ pictures, and Hughes agreed to loan him to Republic Pictures. Republic produced many serials, including a 12-part series about the Masked Marvel. The Masked Marvel was a man in a business suit with a face obscured by an iron mask. His mission was to fight Japanese spies.

Bacon belonged to the four-man team, which included the Masked Marvel, that investigated the spying. He landed the role because four other actors had gotten injured and could not play the part. He joked that the role would probably lead to an injury. Then he was murdered.

Greta had a difficult pregnancy, and in the aftermath of David’s death she lost the baby. Police investigated the case for months. David had been stabbed with a knife with a six-inch blade, but no one ever recovered it. The theories run from the wild to the pedestrian.

SPECULATION Some speculated a hitchhiker killed David Bacon. Greta later told people she believed Howard Hughes had something to do with the murder, that it had to do with a homosexual affair between Hughes and Bacon. Others speculated the murder resulted from a blackmail attempt gone wrong. Police found David’s body in the car with a camera in his car. A roll of film inside contained just one photo, a picture of David standing nude at the beach.

Prosecutors never charged anyone in the murder of Gaspar Bacon, Jr. And no one probably ever will.

David Bacon found the role of the Masked Marvel embarrassing, though people remember him most for it. Oddly, David was not the only member of the cast of the Masked Marvel to be murdered. A fellow actor, Rod Bacon, also was murdered a few years later in 1948.

[edit]
Bacon’s acting career failed to progress, and he drifted for several years. He moved to New York City, where he was sponsored by a wealthy British patron, and although he once again failed to secure employment, he began to wear expensive clothes and jewelry, leading to speculation that he was acting as a gigolo.[2]

He moved to Los Angeles, where he met and married Austrian singer and actress Greta Keller, eleven years his senior, in 1942.[3] In her later years, Keller disclosed that Bacon was homosexual, and that she was lesbian, and that their lavender marriage partly served as what she referred to as a “beard”, allowing both of them to maintain the requisite facade in Hollywood, where they were both attempting to establish film careers.[citation needed]

In 1942, Howard Hughes met Bacon, and signed him to an exclusive contract, with the intention of casting him in The Outlaw (1943) as Billy the Kid.[3] Bacon screen tested for the role and was found unsuitable. Though Hughes later decided not to use Bacon in The Outlaw, replacing him with actor Jack Beutel, he kept Bacon to the terms of his contract, casting him in several smaller roles, usually as college boys.[3] Keller alleged that there was a homosexual relationship between Hughes and Bacon, and she blamed the alleged relationship for Bacon’s being replaced.[3] Hughes, however, was widely known as a womanizer and was often the target of unscrupulous claims to cash in on his money. Later, Hughes did lend Bacon for a role in the Republic serial The Masked Marvel (1943).[4] The serial was produced with a low budget, and marked a low point in Bacon’s career, with Keller recalling that he was completely humiliated. Today it remains his best remembered work.

Death[edit]
On September 12, 1943, Bacon was seen driving a car erratically in Santa Monica, California, before running off the road and into the curb. Several witnesses saw him climb out of the car and stagger briefly before collapsing.[5] As they approached he asked them to help him, but he died before he could say anything more. A small puncture wound was found in his back; the weapon had punctured his lung and caused his death. A weapon was never found, though the wound was suggested to be from a stiletto. Keller, who was then five months pregnant, collapsed when she heard of her husband’s death.[3] She was inconsolable and was given sedatives by Bacon’s brother, a doctor. On September 20, eight days after Bacon’s death, Keller went into labor and delivered a stillborn.[6]

When he died, Bacon was wearing only a swimsuit, and a wallet and camera were found in his car. Also in his car was a small sweater not belonging to Bacon. Allegedly, the film from the camera was developed and found to contain only one image, that of Bacon, nude and smiling on a beach. There is no proof of the existence of this photo, however, and it is believed to be a rumor long built into the story as fact.[citation needed] The case attracted publicity for a time and remains unsolved.

David Bacon was cremated at Cunningham & O’Connor Mortuary in Santa Monica. His cremains were shipped to Massachusetts where they were interred at Woods Hole Village Cemetery (also known as Church of the Messiah Memorial Garden) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts

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