The Tragic Life of Film Actress Lynne Baggett

Lynne Baggett's name is obscure to all but the most avid Hollywood trivia buffs. She is most well known for her marriage to "On The Waterfront" producer, Sam Spiegel. Yet her life is important because of the questions it raises. Baggett was about thirty-five years old when she committed suicide in 1960. A car she borrowed from actor George Tobias (Mr. Kravits on "Bewitched") injured a number of boys in 1954, when Lynne hit a car they were riding in, at a Los Angeles intersection. Unfortunately, one of them died. Baggett fled the accident and turned herself in three days later. She was later jailed for hit-and-run. One of the uncertainties about Lynne is whether a childhood head injury affected her in later life. She was given encephalographs both before and after her car wreck. Lynne was being treated for peripheral neuritis when she died, and had only recently been a patient in a sanitarium. The New York Times obituary stated that she was paralyzed from her knees down. Was her death a combination of depression and physical handicaps?