ACTRESS SUICIDES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 289, 1 August 1932, Page 5

ACTRESS SUICIDES

(Press. Assn.-

LEAVES LOVE NOTE for EX-CHAMPION, JACK DEMPSEY

— By Telegraph — Copyright*. "

LOS ANGELES, Saturday. * Lina Basquette, an actress, 25 years old, swallowed poison to-day, r, few hours after she had announeed her engagement to Teddj Hayes, the " former trainer of Jack Dempsey, to -tifie rumours that she might inarry Dempsey. Beside the actress the police found a note addressed to Jack l eading: "I love you — only you. I couldn't help it. I couldn't go on without you." Physicians said her condition was critical. Miss Basquette, who has been twice married, took a caustic poison after spending the evening with Hayes. She had been so despondent Hayes said, that he had telephoned • to her after he had taken her home, asking: "Are you all right." "Sure, I'm all right; I have just taken poison," was her reply. Hayes lushed to her apartment and administered first aid until the police arrived in answer to an anonymous phone call. The actress was then wiithing in agony on a divan. The police said it might be several days before she was out of danger. Miss Basquette attempted suicide once before in 1930, after an unsuecessful effort to obtain the custody of her child from Mr. Harry Warner, a br other of her husband (Mr. Sam Warner). Miss Basquette was prominent as a dancer as well as an actress. She has been seen in several films screened in New Zealand, in, one of which she played "opposite" George Duryea, who was Abie iff the sta'ge , play, "Abie's Irish Rose," in New Zealand some years ago.