Montrealer leaps from Boston hotel

Montreal's Stanley Bell fled during
a scene with Katharine Hepburn

John Houseman

  You have probably never heard of Montreal-actor Charles F.S. Bell, aka Stanley Bell who died quite spectacularly with a link to John Houseman at age 41 in 1958.
   Bell was from Montreal and was said to represent the 18th generation of actors in his family dating back to Shakespeare's Globe days.

Hotel Touraine in Boston

   Well Stanley Bell was in a play starring Katharine Hepburn directed by John Houseman
in February 1958.
  John Houseman was a big name, of course. Early on he paired up with a young Orson Welles and in his later years made a name for himself as an actor in such films as The Paper Chase, where he played a hard-ass Harvard law professor.
   But something went wrong in Bell's head during an early performance and he dashed from stage while in the middle of a scene.
   Bell, playing the Don Pedro character, committed career suicide by walking off stage in the middle of a scene with Katharine Hepburn in a performance of Much Ado About Nothing in Washington.
   He would later commit real suicide.
   Bell later told Houseman that he had been having trouble sleeping and he wanted to go to Europe.
   He later wanted his job back and visited Houseman's New York apartment. He was greeted by Houseman's wife. Houseman was not in and the two chatted on the phone but Bell scrammed while Housemans' wife was making him tea. (Maybe she had a reputation for making lousy tea? Chimples)
  Soon after, Stanley Bell made his way to Boston where he checked into the Hotel Lennox.
  Later on he leaped out of an eighth story window at the Hotel Touraine, about a mile away from the hotel he was staying at.
   Bell landed dead on the marquee of the hotel and firefighters had to remove his dead body.