Did the curse of Norma Talmadge’s “Jinx Mansion” follow Edna Cudahy to her next Hollywood home?
After the 1921 suicide of her estranged husband, meatpacking heir Jack Cudahy, the wealthy widow vacated 7629 Hollywood Boulevard and moved to 1844 Vine Street: Estate De Havenhurst, the former residence of Carter DeHaven. The comedic actor and his wife Flora were forced to auction their Italian villa and all its furnishings in 1923. The new homeowner subsequently rented it out to Edna Cudahy.
The magnificent estate (previously owned by banker Ortho S. Houston) was situated on the southeast corner of Franklin Avenue and featured a two-story reception hall, sunroom, smoking room, billiard room (with soda fountain), and miniature motion picture theater (complete with an orchestra pit).
Outside, the manicured grounds were accentuated by sunken gardens and a swimming pool.
Edna initially moved into 1844 Vine with her teenage son Michael and older daughters, newly-divorced Edna Jr., Marie, and Anne. But within a few years the three girls married, leaving only Edna and Michael in the mansion.
To offset the $150 monthly rent (equivalent to $2,800 in 2025), Edna took in a slew of boarders—coincidentally, people described as “down on their luck.” When they started dying off one by one, the press dubbed them “victims of misfortune.”
The first was world-famous jockey, Tod Sloan, who reportedly burned though $1 million (approx. $18 million today) in just two years. In 1926, after his second divorce, “penniless” Sloan and his young daughter Ann moved into an upstairs bedroom.
But it was downstairs where he spent a great deal of time boozing at Edna’s parties, often with her wayward son Michael, who had an affinity for motion picture actresses and was briefly engaged to Joan Crawford. In 1929, 21-year-old Michael drunkenly crashed his car at Franklin and Argyle just moments after leaving 1844 Vine. Sloan testified as a witness for the defense, as did Edna who swore her son had been sober despite multiple witnesses claiming the contrary. Michael was convicted of DUI and fined $5,000.
By November 1933, Sloan was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and confined to bed. On the night of the 8th, he attempted to light a cigar but burnt his finger—and dropped the lit match, setting fire to a pile of newspapers on the floor. As the flames consumed Sloan’s bed, Ann ran downstairs for help. Michael raced through the smoke-filled room to rescue the 100-pound former jockey, “according to the account told by the family,” reported the Citizen-News.
Sloan survived, but just three weeks later he was “near death” in the hospital due to his failing liver. With the end near, an anonymous friend who wanted Sloan’s final days to be comfortable paid for him to be removed to Sylvan Lodge convalescent home. The mystery benefactor was most likely not Edna, who relished publicity. All the same, as Sloan’s final weeks were documented in the papers, neither Edna nor Michael reportedly visited him. Four days before Christmas on December 21, Tod Sloan died at the age of 59.
Two months later, his will was filed in probation court—and revealed Sloan wasn’t truly broke. His estate was worth $9,500 ($230,000 in 2025), all of which went to his 10-year-old daughter Ann who would continue living with Edna. A provision in Sloan’s will stated that should his estate exceed $10,000, Edna received 25% of the surplus. So when she learned he owned a California gold mine that had yet to yield a fortune, she invested $5,000 of her own money to ensure it did “for the sake of Ann,” Edna insisted to the Kansas City Star.
She also claimed she had begged Sloan not to put her in his will because “I don’t want the publicity of it” when he informed her the previous summer. “But Tod apparently wanted to remember me and his appreciation in that way, so it is all right.”
One of Sloan’s pallbearers was another troubled resident of the Cudahy Mansion: former matinee idol Lou Tellegen. Four years earlier, the handsome actor had suffered burns to his face when he fell asleep smoking a cigarette. Although he underwent extensive plastic surgery, his career never recovered and by 1932, Tellegen was bankrupt and separated from his fourth wife, Eve Casanova.
In an attempt at a Hollywood comeback, he moved back to Los Angeles and befriended Edna “when she found him ill and alone in the film colony.”
“Lou Tellegen has succeeded the late Tod Sloan at Widow Cudahy’s mansion…” -- Evening Courier (Oct. 8, 1934)
In the spring of 1934, Tellegen landed a role in Caravan opposite Loretta Young, but just before the start of filming, he was hospitalized for “a minor intestinal ailment.” According to William Branch—the Cudahy family’s physician who also treated Sloan—Tellegen had terminal bladder cancer. Unbelievably, he was never informed of the diagnosis, even after Dr. Branch operated on him three different times in a matter of months.
Despondent over his “mystery” illness, the 50-year-old actor spiraled. “He kept saying he feared he was going insane,” Edna recalled to the Citizen-News. “I don’t think he was,” countered Tellegen’s personal physician, Dr. Charles Cooper. “At least he seemed perfectly sane to me.”
Their conflicting statements were in response to what happened to Tellegen on Oct. 29, 1934.
The actor had overslept and refused breakfast, but after that, Edna’s account of events differed considerably. According to one version, she then went upstairs to check on Tellegen and he was in the bathroom with the door shut. Edna knocked and received no response, but heard “movement” and “a weak voice” so she summoned her butler, William Wynn. Together they opened the door, and “Tellegen collapsed at their feet,” reported the Los Angeles Times. Edna’s second version asserted that an hour after Tellegen turned down breakfast, she sent Wynn upstairs, where he found the actor on the bathroom floor.
In both accounts, Tellegen was bloody and barely breathing. He had apparently shaved and powdered his face—and with a pair of sewing scissors, stabbed himself seven times in the chest, twice penetrating his heart, which proved fatal.
“How he managed to repeatedly stab himself, while in such a weakened condition, and bear the pain of thrust after thrust, mystified police,” declared the LA Times. Despite this, after talking to Edna “there was no doubt of suicide,” reported the San Francisco Examiner.
An autopsy was performed, yet Tellegen’s death certificate makes no mention of cancer, not even as a “contributing cause” of his suicide.
Over and over again throughout the press coverage, the once-famous actor was described as being “alone and friendless” in his final months, with only the support of dear Edna Cudahy. But that wasn’t a fair statement, insisted Tellegen’s third ex-wife Nina Romano, who attended his funeral. “He had scores of deep and intimate friends, who would have been glad to help had they known of his illness.” It’s unclear if Romano was aware that even Tellegen didn’t know he had cancer, only Edna and Dr. Branch.
Unlike Tod Sloan, Lou Tellegen died virtually penniless: His estate was worth only $300 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2025), all of which went to his fourth wife.
It would be more than a decade before another Cudahy Mansion occupant died—and then it was three people in a nine-month period, beginning in July 1946 with one of Edna’s servants, Horace Waters, and ending with interior decorator Francis W. Simmons in April 1947. Two months earlier on Valentine’s Day, Michael Cudahy suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at home and died four hours later at the hospital, with no friends or family present. He was only 38.
Two days after burying her son, Edna filed his will in probate court to divvy up the meatpacking heir’s $200,000 estate ($2.8 million in 2025), the bulk of which went to herself via a trust (that would, upon Edna’s death, carry over to her daughter Anne). Anne’s 18-year-old son Raymond as well as film director James Stacy and his daughter Elaine were also named beneficiaries.
Unfortunately for Edna, she didn’t live long enough to reap the massive inheritance. Michael’s will was contested by his other two sisters, Edna Jr. and Marie, to whom he left nothing. The pair had married and moved to Europe (but since returned to the US), and although the siblings traveled back and forth for visits over the years, “they were almost strangers to him,” testified Edna Sr. On the contrary, Michael’s Los Angeles-based family—Edna, Anne, and Raymond—were the “primary objects of his bounty.”
According to Edna, Michael had been “crazy” about Raymond and referred to Anne as his “pet sister.” The other two, added their mother, “were capable of taking care of themselves and their children.” (In 1941, a trust created by the their father Jack Cudahy was disbursed equally to all four Cudahy children, 20 years after his apparent suicide.)
Perhaps she was biased? The final ruling in Northern Trust Co. v. Cudahy suggested as much, yet sided with Edna, Anne, and Raymond. “It is true, as appellants argue, that much of the foregoing testimony was given by interested witnesses, but it is significant that Edna C. Cudahy whose best financial interests would be served by a determination that the testator did not exercise his power of appointment, emphasized her son's feeling of responsibility and affection for his sister Anne and her son Raymond, and by her pleading and evidence upon trial, she took the position that the court should rule that the power of appointment was exercised because such was the intention of the testator.”
By the time the Appellate Court of Illinois ruled in February 1950, both Edna Sr. and Edna Jr. were dead.
For the matriarch, those three years were tumultuous. Following the premature death of her 48-year-old estranged daughter, Edna Sr. was threatened with the loss of her longtime Hollywood home, which stood in the path of the forthcoming 101 freeway. As the state litigated with Edna’s landlord, Alice Vinson, over the purchase price of 1844 Vine, Vinson sued Edna for $10,000 for “gross neglect” of the crumbling mansion in February 1949. The lawsuit was tossed that June, but before Vinson could evict her 71-year-old tenant, Edna died from a ruptured appendix at her home of nearly three decades on September 10. Her obituary boasted 1844 Vine had been “the former residence of movie producer Thomas H. Ince,” however, it was not (Vinson started that rumor).
Four months later in January 1950, 1844 Vine was auctioned by the California Division of State Highways. It’s unclear if the home was relocated or demolished, but either way its loss may not have been necessary: The 101 freeway was ultimately routed just north of the mansion. For 38 years, it remained an empty lot until a self-storage facility was built in 1988.
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