Gig Young

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Image:GigYoung.JPG Gig Young (November 4, 1913 – October 19, 1978) was an American film actor.

Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Young began acting in his teens under his given name, but later changed it to avoid confusion with another actor of the same name. The name "Gig Young" was taken from a character he played in one of his earliest films, The Gay Sisters (1942).

Signed to a contract with Warner Brothers, Young appeared in supporting roles in numerous films during the 1940s, and came to be regarded as a popular and likeable second lead, playing the brothers or friends of the principal characters. During WWII, Young took a hiatus from his movie career and served admirably in the United States Coast Guard, alongside fellow Hollywood actors Cesar Romero and Richard Cromwell.

In the early 1950s Young began to play the type of role that he would become best known for, a sardonic but engaging and affable drunk. His dramatic work as an alcoholic in Come Fill the Cup (1951), and his comedic role as a tipsy but ultimately charming cad in Teacher's Pet (1958), each earned him nominations for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He won the Academy Award for his role as Rocky, the dance marathon emcee and promoter in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969).

Young married his third wife, actress Elizabeth Montgomery, 20 years his junior, in 1956. They divorced in 1963 amid rumors of domestic violence.

In 1978 he married his fifth wife, a 31 year-old German art gallery employee named Kim Schmidt. Three weeks after their marriage they were both found dead at home with gunshot wounds to the head in their New York City apartment. Police theorize that Young first shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself in a suicide pact. Though the case attracted considerable media attention and speculation, Young's motivation for the murder/suicide remains unknown, as he left no suicide note, and his associates could provide no explanation for his action. The murder/suicide occurred in The Sheffield building at 322 West 57th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, now owned by Swig Equities, where two separate suicides occurred in the early 1990s from people jumping to their deaths from their high-rise apartment windows. Nicknamed "The Deathfield" by New York real estate brokers, The Sheffield--with its history of murder and suicides by those who have lived there--is considered by residents to be haunted by the ghosts of the dead, including that of Gig Young.

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