ELSIE DE WOLFE, American interior designer, born (d. 1904); was a pioneering professional interior decorator in the United States, nominal author of the influential 1913 book "The House in Good Taste," and a prominent figure in New York, Paris, and London society. During her married life, the press usually referred to her as Lady Mendl.

She is often credited with inventing the profession of interior decoration (she didn’t), with being an actress (not!) and madly in love with her husband, Sir Charles Mendl (nope.) In the 18^th century, interior decoration was the purview of upholsterers (who sold fabrics and furniture) and architects (who employed a variety of craftsmen and artisans to complete interior design schemes for clients), while in the 19^th century, the skills of designers such as Candace Wheeler and design firms such as Herter Brothers were well known. De Wolfe reaped an enormous amount of publicity and doubtless was the field's most famed practitioner in the early 1900s, a period that also saw an increase of interest in interior design in the popular press.

De Wolfe was, in the order of her claims, an interior decorator (probably among the first 10,000 or so, but hardly the first); a clotheshorse whose abilities as a thespian never quite equaled the Parisian gowns people paid good money to see her model on the New York stage, and the Lesbian lover of Elizabeth Marbury (Sir Charles, who didn’t like boys, didn’t mind his wife’s past at all.)With the help of Marbury, Elsie became decorator to the exceptionally wealthy.

Among her clients were Anne Vanderbilt, Anne Morgan, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Adelaide and Henry Clay Frick. She transformed the design of wealthy homes from the dark Victorian style into designs featuring light, fresh colors and a reliance on 18th-century French furniture and reproductions. Her detractors, who thought little of her talents and less of her social climbing, simply called her “the chintz lady.” On first seeing the Parthenon, De Wolfe exclaimed "It's beige—my color!" At her house in France, the Villa Trianon, she had a dog cemetery in which every tombstone read "The one I loved the best."

ALBERT DEKKER, American actor, born (d: 1968); American character actor best known for his roles in Marie Antoinette, Beau Geste, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Killers, and The Wild Bunch. He is sometimes credited as Albert Van Dekker or Albert van Dekker. Dekker enjoyed a long career in pictures and one role that immediately identifies him to film buffs, is the one which he donned those thick spectacles and reduced everyone in sight to toy size in Dr. Cyclops.  He was also a California Assemblyman.

In life, as in this film, his future was ill-starred. His was one of the more unforgettable and bizarre Hollywood suicides.

After being missing for several days, he was found kneeling nude in the bathtub.  A noose was around his neck, but not tight enough to have strangled him. A scarf was tied over his eyes and a horse’s bit was in his mouth, fashioned from a rubber ball and metal wire, the bit had chain "reins" that were tightly tied beneath his head.

Two leather straps were stretched between the leather belts that girded his neck and chest. A third belt, around his waist, was tied with a rope that stretched to his ankles, where it had been tied in some kind of timber hitch. The end of the rope, which continued up his side, wrapped around his wrist several times and was held in Dekker’s hand.

Handcuffs clamped both wrists with a key attached. Written in red lipstick on his right buttock was the word, "whip." Sunrays had also been drawn around his nipples. "Make me suck," was written on his throat, and "slave," and "cocksucker," on his chest. On his stomach, in lipstick, was drawn a vagina. He had apparently been dead for several days.  He was 62 years old.

MOSS HART, American dramatist died (b. 1904); Hart married Kitty Carlisle in 1946, and they had two biological children (a third pregnancy was a miscarriage). Nonetheless, the longtime bachelor was thought to be homosexual by many of his own friends and reportedly spent much time in therapy regarding his attraction to men. (Carlisle reportedly did ask him if he was gay before they married and he responded that he was not.).

In his screenplay for the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, Hart wrote the following line for bisexual actor Danny Kaye (playing the title character): "You'd be surprised how many kings are only a queen with a moustache."